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MOSSES FROM AN OLD 
MANSE 



BY 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



Vol. II 



NEW YORK 
THE MERSHON COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



THE NEW ADAM AND EVE. 

We who are born into the world's artificial 
system can never adequately know how little in 
our present state and circumstances is natural, 
and how much is merely the interpolation of the 
perverted mind and heart of man. Art has be- 
come a second and stronger nature ; she is a step- 
mother, whose 'crafty tenderness has taught us tc 
despise the bountiful and wholesome ministra- 
tions of our true parent. It is only through the 
medium of the imagination that we can lessen 
those iron fetters, which we call truth and reality, 
and make ourselves even partially sensible what 
prisoners w^e are. For instance, let us conceive 
good Father Miller's interpretation of the proph- 
ecies to have proved true. The Day of Doom 
has burst upon the globe and swept away the 
whole race of men. From cities and fields, sea- 
shore and midland mountain region, vast conti- 
nents, and even the remotest islands of the ocean, 
each living thing is gone. No breath of a 



2 MOSSES FROM AiV OLD MANSE. 

created being disturbs this earthly atmosphere. 
Eut the abodes of man, and all that he has ac- 
complished, the footprints of his wanderings and 
the results of his toil, the visible symbols of his 
intellectual cultivation and moral progress, — in 
short, everything physical that can give evidence 
of his present position, — shall remain untouched 
by the hand of destiny. Then, to inherit and 
repeople this waste and deserted earth, we will 
suppose a new Adam and a new Eve to have 
been created, in the full development of mind 
and heart, but with no knowledge of their pre- 
decessors nor of the diseased circumstances that 
had become incrusted around them. Such a pair 
would at once distinguish between art and nat- 
ure. Their instincts and intuitions would im- 
mediately recognize the wisdom and simplicity 
of the latter; while the former, with its elaborate 
perversities, would offer them a continual succes- 
sion of puzzles. 

Let us attempt, in a mood half sportive and 
half thoughtful, to track these imaginary heirs 
of our mortality through their first day's experi- 
ence. No longer ago than yesterday the flame 
of human life was extinguished ; there has been 
a breathless night ; and now another morn ap- 
proaches, expecting to find the earth no less 
desolate than at eventide. 

It is dawn. The east puts on its immemorial 
blush, although no human eye is gazing at it; 
for all the phenomena of the natural world renew 
themselves, in spite of the solitude that now 
broods around the globe. There is still beauty 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 3 

cf earth, sea, and sky, for beauty's sake. But 
soon there are to be spectators. Just when the 
earliest sunshine gilds earth's mountain-tops, two 
beings have come into life, not in such an Eden 
as bloomed to welcome our first parents, but in 
the heart of a modern city. They find them- 
selves in existence, and gazing into one another's 
eyes. Their emotion is not astonishment ; nor 
do they perplex themselves with efforts to dis- 
cover what, and whence, and v^hy they are. 
Each is satisfied to be, because the other exists 
likewise ; and their first consciousness is of calm 
and mutual enjoyment, which seems not to have 
been the birth of that very moment, but prolonged 
from a past eternity. Thus content with an inner 
sphere which they inhabit together, it is not 
immediately that the outward world can obtrude 
itself upon their notice. 

Soon, however, they feel the invincible neces- 
sity of this earthly life, and begin to make ac- 
quaintance with the objects and circumstances 
that surround them. Perhaps no other stride so 
vast remains to be taken as when they first turn 
from the reality of their mutual glance to the 
dreams and shadows that perplex them every- 
where else. 

" Sweetest Eve, where are we ? " exclaims the 
new Adam ; for speech, or some equivalent mode 
of expression, is born with them, and comes just 
as natural as breath. " Methinks I do not recog- 
)iize this place." 

" Nor I, dear Adam," replies the new Eve. 
*^ And what a strange place, too ! Let me come 



4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

closer to thy side and behold thee only ; for all 
other sights trouble and perplex my spirit.'^ 

"Nay, Eve/' replies Adam, who appears to 
have the stronger tendency towards the material 
world ; " it were well that we gain some insight 
into these matters. We are in an odd situation 
here. Let us look about us.'' 

Assuredly there are sights enough to throw the 
new inheritors of earth into a state of hopeless 
perplexity. The long lines of edifices, their win- 
dows glittering in the yellow sunshine, and the 
narrow street between, with its barren pavement 
tracked and battered by wheels that have now 
rattled into an irrevocable past ! The signs, 
with their unintelligible hieroglyphics ! The 
squareness and ugliness, and regular or irregular 
deformity of everything that meets the eye ! 
The marks of wear and tear, and unrenewed 
decay, which distinguish the works of man from 
the growth of nature ! What is there in all this, 
capable of the slightest significance to minds 
that know nothing of the artificial system which 
is implied in every lamp-post and each brick of 
the houses? Moreover, the utter loneliness and 
silence, in a scene that originally grew out of 
noise and bustle, must needs impress a feeling 
of desolation even upon Adam and Eve, unsus- 
picious as they are of the recent extinction of 
human existence. In a forest, solitude would be 
life ; in a city, it is death. 

The new Eve looks round with a sensation of 
doubt and distrust, such as a city dame, the 
daughter of numberless generations of citizens, 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 5 

might experience if suddenly transported to the 
garden of Eden. At length her downcast eye 
discovers a small tuft of grass, just beginning to 
sprout among the stones of the pavement ; she 
eagerly grasps it, and is sensible that this little 
herb awakens some response within her heart. 
Nature finds nothing else to offer her. Adam, 
after staring up and down the street without 
detecting a single object that his comprehension 
can lay hold of, finally turns his forehead to the 
sky. There, indeed, is something which the soul 
within him recognizes. 

'' Look up yonder, mine own Eve," he cries ; 
" surely we ought to dwell among those gold- 
tinged clouds or in the blue depths beyond them. 
I know not how nor when, but evidently we have 
strayed away from our home ; for I see nothing 
hereabouts, that seems to belong to us." 

" Can we not ascend thither ? " inquires Eve. 

" Why not ? " answers Adam, hopefully. " But 
no ; something drags us down in spite of our 
best efforts. Perchance we may find a path 
hereafter." 

In the energy of new life it appears no such 
impracticable feat to climb into the sky. But 
they have already received a woful lesson, wdiich 
may finally go far towards reducing them to the 
level of the departed race, when they acknowl- 
edge the necessity of keeping the beaten track of 
earth. They now set forth on a ramble through 
the city, in the hope of making their escape from 
this uncongenial sphere. Already in the fresh 
elasticity of their spirits they have found the idea 



6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

of weariness. We will watch them as they entei 
some of the shops and public or private edifices ; 
for every door, whether of alderman or beggar, 
church or hall of state, has been flung^wide open 
by the same agency that swept away the inmates. 

It so happens, — and not unluckily for an Adam 
and Eve who are still in the costume that might 
better have befitted' Eden, — it so happens that 
their first visit is to a fashionable dry-goods store. 
No courteous and importunate attendants hasten 
to receive their orders ; no throng of ladies are 
tossing over the rich Parisian fabrics. All is de- 
serted ; trade is at a stand-still ; and not even an 
echo of the national watchword, " Go ahead ! " 
disturbs the quiet of the new customers. But 
specimens of the latest earthly fashions, silks of 
every shade, and whatever is most delicate or 
splendid for the decoration of the human form, 
lie scattered around, profusely as bright autumnal 
leaves in a forest. Adam looks at a few of the 
articles, but throws them carelessly aside with, 
whatever exclamation may correspond to " Pish ! " 
or " Pshaw ! '' in the new vocabulary of nature. 
Eve, however, — be it said without offence to her 
native modesty, — examines these treasures of her 
sex with somewhat livelier interest. A pair of 
corsets chance to lie upon the counter ; she in- 
spects them curiously, but knows not what to make 
of them. Then she handles a fashionable silk 
with dim yearnings, thoughts that wander hither 
and thither, instincts groping in the dark. 

'' On the whole, I do not like it," she observes, 
laying the glossy fabric upon the counter. " But 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 7 

Adam, it is very straage. What can these things 
mean ? Surely, I ought to know ; yet they put 
me in perfect maze." 

*' Poh ! my dear Eve, why trouble thy little 
head about such nonsense ? " cries Adam, in a fit 
of impatience. " Let us go somewhere else. But 
stay ; how very beautiful ! My loveliest Eve, 
what a charm you have imparted to that robe by 
merely throwing it over your shoulders ! " 

For Eve, with the taste that nature moulded 
into her composition, has taken a remnant of ex- 
quisite silver gauze and drawn it around her form, 
with an effect that gives Adam his first idea of 
the witchery of dress. He beholds his spouse in 
a new light and with renewed admiration ; yet is 
hardly reconciled to any other attire than her own 
golden locks. However, emulating Eve's ex- 
ample, he makes free with a mantle of blue vel- 
vet, and puts it on so picturesquely that it might 
seem to have fallen from heaven upon his stately 
figure. Thus garbed they go in search of new 
discoveries. 

They next wander into a Church, not to make 
a display of their fine clothes, but attracted by its 
spire pointing upwards to the sky, whither they 
have already yearned to climb. As they enter the 
portal, a clock, which it was the last earthly act 
of the sexton to wind up, repeats the hour in deep 
reverberating tones ; for Time has survived his 
former progeny, and, with the iron tongue that 
man gave him, is now speaking to his two grand- 
children. They listen, but understand him not. 
Nature would measure time by the succession of 



8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

thoughts and acts which constitute real life, and 
not by hours of emptiness. They pass up the 
church-aisle, and raise their eyes to the ceiling. 
Had our Adam and Eve become mortal in some 
European city, and strayed into the vastness and 
sublimity of an old cathedral, they might have 
recognized the purpose for which the deep-souled 
founders reared it. Like the dim awfulness of an 
ancient forest, its very atmosphere would have in- 
cited them to prayer. Within the snug walls of 
a metropolitan church there can be no such in- 
fluence. 

Yet some odor of religion is still lingering here, 
the bequest of pious souls, who had grace to en- 
joy a foretaste of immortal life. Perchance they 
breathe a prophecy of a better world to their suc- 
cessors, who have become obnoxious to all their 
own cares and calamities in the present one. 

" Eve, something impels me to look upward,'' 
says Adam ; "• but it troubles me to see this roof 
between us and the sky. Let us go forth, and 
perhaps we shall discern a Great Face looking 
down upon us." 

"' Yes ; a Great Face, with a beam of love 
brightening over it, like sunshine," responds Eve. 
" Surely we have seen such a countenance some- 
where." 

They go out of the church, and kneeling at its 
threshold give way to the spirit's natural instinct 
of adoration towards a beneficent Father. But, 
in truth, their life thus far has been a continual 
prayer. Purity and simplicity hold converse at 
every moment with their Creator. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 9 

We now observe them entering a Court of Jus- 
tice. But what remotest conception can they at- 
tain of the purposes of such an edifice ? How 
should the idea occur to them that human breth- 
ren, of Hke nature with themselves, and originally 
included in the same law of love which is their 
only rule of life, should ever need an outward en- 
forcement of the true voice within their souls ? 
And what, save a woful experience, the dark result 
of many centuries, could teach them the sad mys- 
teries of crime ? O Judgment Seat, not by the 
pure in heart wast thou established, nor in the 
simplicity of nature ; but by hard and wrinkled 
men, and upon the accumulated heap of earthly 
wrong. Thou art the very symbol of man's per- 
verted state. 

On as fruitless an errand our wanderers next 
visit a Hall of Legislature, where Adam places 
Eve in the Speaker's chair, unconscious of the 
moral which he thus exemplifies. Man's intel- 
lect, moderated by Woman's tenderness and 
moral sense ! Were such the legislation of the 
world there Vv'ould be no need of State Houses, 
Capitols, Halls of Parliament, nor even of those 
little assemblages of patriarchs beneath the 
shadowy trees, by whom freedom was first inter- 
preted to mankind on our native shores. 

Whither go they next? A perverse destiny 
seems to perplex them with one after another of 
the riddles which mankind put forth to the wan- 
dering universe, and left unsolved in their own 
destruction. They enter an edifice of stern gray 
stone standing insulated in the midst of others, 



10 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

and gloomy even in the sunshine, which it barely 
suffers to penetrate through its iron grated win- 
dows. It is a prison. The jailer has left his 
post at the summons of a stronger authority than 
the sheriff's. But the prisoners ? Did the mes- 
senger of fate, w^hen he shook open all the doors, 
respect the magistrate's warrant and the judge's 
sentence, and leave the inmates of the dungeons 
to be delivered by due course of earthly law ? 
No ; a new trial has been granted in a higher 
court, which may set judge, jury, and prisoner at 
its bar all in a row, and perhaps find one no less 
guilty than another. The jail, like the whole 
earth, is now a solitude, and has thereby lost 
something of its dismal gloom. But here are the 
narrow cells, like tombs, only drearier and dead- 
lier, because in these the immortal spirit was 
buried with the body. Inscriptions appear on 
the walls, scribbled with a pencil or scratched 
with a rusty nail ; brief words of agony, perhaps, 
or guilt's desperate defiance to the world, or 
merely a record of a date by which the writer 
strove to keep up with the march of life. There 
is not a living eye that could now decipher these 
memorials. 

Nor is it while so fresh from their Creator's 
hand that the new denizens of earth — no, nor 
their descendants for a thousand years — could 
discover that this edifice was a hospital for the 
direst disease which could afflict their predeces- 
sors. Its patients bore the outward marks of 
that leprosy with which all were more or less 
infected. They were sick — and so were the 



MOSSES FROM AA^ OLD MANSE, it 

purest of their brethren — with the plague of sin. 
A deadly sickness, indeed ! - Feeling its symp- 
toms within the breast, men concealed it with 
fear and shame, and were only the more cruel to 
those unfortunates whose pestiferous sores were 
flagrant to the common eye. Nothing save a 
rich garment could ever hide the plague-spot. In 
the course of the world's lifetime, every remedy 
was tried for its cure and extirpation, except the 
single one, the flower that grew in Heaven and 
was sovereign for all the miseries of earth. Man 
never had attempted to cure sin by Love ! Had 
he but once made the effort, it might well have 
happened that there would have been no more 
need of the dark lazar-house into which Adam 
and Eve have wandered. Hasten forth with 
your native innocence, lest the damps of these 
still conscious walls infect you likewise, and thus 
another fallen race be propagated ! 

Passing from. the interior of the prison into the 
space within its outward wall, Adam pauses 
beneath a structure of the simplest contrivance, 
yet altogether unaccountable to him. It consists 
merely of two upright posts, supporting a trans- 
verse beam, from which dangles a cord. 

" Eve, Eve ! '^ cries Adam, shuddering with a 
nameless horror. " What can this thing be ? " 

" I know not," answers Eve ; '' but, Adam, my 
heart is sick ! There seems to be no more sky, 
— no more sunshine ! '' 

Well might Adam shudder and poor Eve be 
sick at heart ; for this mysterious object was the 
type of mankind's whole system in regard to the 



12 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

great difficulties which God had given to be 
solved, — a system of fear and vengeance, never 
successful, yet followed to the last. Here, on 
the morning when the final summons came, a 
criminal — one criminal, where none were guilt- 
less — had died upon the gallows. Had the world 
heard the footfall of its own approaching doom, it 
would have been no inappropriate act thus to close 
the record of its deeds by one so characteristic. 

The two pilgrims now hurry from the prison. 
Had they known how the former inhabitants of 
earth were shut up in artificial error and cramped 
and chained by their perversions, they might have 
compared the whole moral world to a prison- 
house, and have deemed the removal of the race 
a general jail-delivery. 

They next enter, unannounced, but they might 
have rung at the door in vain, a private mansion, 
one of the stateliest in Beacon Street. A wild 
and plaintive strain of music is quivering through 
the house, now rising like a solemn organ-peal, 
and now dying into the faintest murmur, as if 
some spirit that had felt an interest in the 
departed family were bemoaning itself in the soli- 
tude of hall and chamber. Perhaps a virgin, the 
purest of mortal race, has been left behind to 
perform a requiem for the whole kindred of 
humanity. Not so. These are the tones of an 
^olian harp, through which Nature pours the 
harmony that lies concealed in her every breath, 
whether of summer breeze or tempest. Adam 
and Eve are lost in rapture, unmingled with sur- 
prise. The passing wind, that stirred the harp- 



MOSSES FROM AIV OLD MANSE. 15 

strings, has been hushed, before they can think 
of examining the splendid furniture, the gorgeous 
carpets, and the architecture of the rooms. 
These things amuse their unpractised eyes, but 
appeal to nothing within their hearts. Even the 
pictures upon the walls scarcely excite a deeper 
interest; for there is something radically arti- 
ficial and deceptive in painting with which minds 
in the primal simplicity cannot sympathize. The 
unbidden guests examine a row of family por- 
traits, but are too dull to recognize them as men 
and women, beneath the disguise of a preposter- 
ous garb, and with features and expression 
debased, because inherited through ages of moral 
and physical decay. 

Chance, however, presents them with pictures 
of human beauty, fresh from the hand of Nature. 
As they enter a magnificent apartment they are 
astonished, but not affrighted, to perceive two 
figures advancing to meet them. Is it not awful 
to imagine that any life, save their own, should 
remain in the wide world .'* 

" How is this ? '' exclaims Adam. *^ My beauti- 
ful Eve, are you in two places at once 1 ^' 

" And you, Adam ! " answers Eve, doubtful, 
yet delighted. "Surely that noble and lovely 
form is yours. Yet here you are by my side. 
I am content with one, — methinks there should 
not be two." 

This miracle is wrought by a tall looking-glass, 
the mystery of which they soon fathom, because 
Nature creates a mirror for the human face in 
every pool of water, and for her own great feat 



• 14 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

ures in waveless lakes. Pleased and satisfied 
with gazing at themselves, they now discover the 
marble statue of a child in a corner of the room 
so exquisitely idealized that it is almost worthy 
to be the prophetic likeness of their first-born. 
Sculpture, in its highest excellence, is more 
genuine than painting, and might seem to be 
evolved from a natural germ, by the same law as 
a leaf or flower. The statue of the child im- 
presses the solitary pair as if it were a com- 
panion ; it likewise hints at secrets both of the 
past and future. 

''' My husband ! " whispers Eve. 

" What would you say, dearest Eve ? " inquires 
Adam. 

"• I wonder if we are alone in the world," she 
continues, with a sense of something like fear at 
the thought of other inhabitants. This lovely 
little form ! Did it ever breathe ? Or is it only 
the shadow of something real, like our pictures 
in the mirror ? '' 

^' It is strange ! '' replies Adam, pressing his 
hand to his brow. " There are mysteries all 
around us. An idea flits continually before me, 
— would that I could seize it ! Eve, Eve, are we 
treading in the footsteps of beings that bore a 
likeness to ourselves ? If so, whither are they 
gone ? — and why is their world so unfit for our 
dwelling-place ? " 

'' Our great Father only knows," answers Eve. 
" But something tells me that we shall not alw^ays 
be alone. And how sweet if other beings were 
Xm visit us in the shape of this fair image ! " 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



IS 



Then they wandei through the house, and 
everywhere find tokens of human Ufe, which now, 
with the idea recently suggested, excite a deeper 
curiosity in their bosoms. Woman has here left 
traces of her delicacy and refinement, and of her 
gentle labors. Eve ransacks a work-basket and 
instinctively thrusts the rosy tip of her finger into 
a thimble. She takes up a piece of embroidery,, 
glowing with mimic flowers, in one of which a 
fair damsel of the departed race has left her 
needle. Pity that the Day of Doom should have 
anticipated the completion of such a useful task ! 
Eve feels almost conscious of the skill to finish 
it. A pianoforte has been left open. She flings 
her hand carelessly over the keys, and strikes 
out a sudden melody, no less natural than the 
strains of the ^olian harp, but joyous with the 
dance of her yet unburdened life. Passing 
through a dark entry they find a broom behind 
the door ; and -Eve, who comprises the whole 
nature of womanhood, has a dim idea that it is 
an instrument proper for her hand. In another 
apartment they behold a canopied bed, and all 
the appliances of luxurious repose. A heap of 
forest-leaves would be more to the purpose. They 
enter the nursery, and are perplexed with the 
sight of little gowns and caps, tiny shoes, and a 
cradle, amid the drapery of which is still to be 
seen the impress of a baby's form. Adam 
slightly notices these trifles ; but Eve becomes 
involved in a fit of mute reflection from which it 
is hardly possible to rouse her. 

By a most unlucky arrangement there was to 



1 6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

have been a grand dinner-party in this mansion 
on the very day when the whole human family, 
including the invited guests, were summoned to 
the unknown regions of illimitable space. At 
the moment of fate, the table was actually spread, 
and the company on the point of sitting down. 
Adam and Eve come unbidden to the banquet ; 
it has now been some time cold, but otherwise 
furnishes them with highly favorable specimens 
of the gastronomy of their predecessors. But t 
is difficult to imagine the perplexity of the un- 
perverted couple, in endeavoring to find proper 
food for their first meal, at a table where the 
cultivated appetites of a fashionable party were 
to have been gratified. Will Nature teach them 
the mystery of a plate of turtle-soup ? Will she 
embolden them to attack a haunch of venison ? 
Will she initiate them into the merits of a Parisian 
pasty, imported by the last steamer that ever 
crossed the Atlantic ? Will she not, rather, bid 
them turn with disgust from fish, fowl, and flesh, 
which, to their pure nostrils, steam with a loath- 
some odor of death and corruption ? — Food ? 
The bill of fare contains nothing which they rec- 
cognize as such. 

Fortunately, however, the dessert is ready upon 
a neighboring table. Adam, whose appetite and 
animal instincts are quicker than those of Eve, 
discovers this fitting banquet. 

*' Here, dearest Eve,'* he exclaims, — " here is 
food.^' 

" Well," answered she, with the germ of a 
housewife stirring within her, " we have been so 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 17 

busy to-day, that a picked-up dinner must 
serve. '* 

So Eve comes to the table and receives a red* 
cheeked apple from her husband's hand in re- 
quital of her predecessors's fatal gift to our com- 
mon grandfather. She eats it without sin, and, 
let us hope, with no disastrous consequences to 
her future progeny. They make a plentiful, yet 
temperate, meal of fruit, which, though not gath- 
ered in paradise, is legitimately derived from the 
seeds that were planted there. Their primal 
appetite is satisfied. 

'' What shall we drink. Eve ? " inquires Adam. 

Eve peeps among some bottles and decanters, 
which, as they contain fluids, she naturally con- 
ceives must be proper to quench thirst. But 
never before did claret, hock, and madeira, of 
rich and rare perfume, excite such disgust as now. 

** Pah ! " she exclaims, after smelling at various 
wines. " What stuff is here } The beings who 
have gone before us could not have possessed 
the same nature that we do ; for neither their 
hunger nor thirst were like our own." 

''' Pray hand me yonder bottle," says Adam. 
" If it be drinkable by any manner of mortal, I 
must moisten my throat with it." 

After some remonstrances, she takes up a 
champagne bottle, but is frightened by the sudden 
explosion of the cork, and drops it upon the 
floor. There tbe untasted liquor effervesces.. 
Had they quaffed it they would have experienced 
that brief delirium whereby, whether excited by^ 
moral or physical causes, man sought to recom- 
2 



i8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

pense himself for the calm, life-long joys which 
he had lost by his revolt from nature. At length, 
in a refrigerator, Eve finds a glass pitcher of 
water, pure, cold, and bright as ever gushed from 
a fountain among the hills. Both drink ; and 
such refreshment does it bestow, that they ques- 
tion one another if this precious liquid be not 
identical with the stream of life within them. 

" And now,'' observes Adam, " we must again 
try to discover what sort of a world this is, and 
why we have been sent hither." 

" Why ? to love one another,'' cries Eve, " Is 
not that employment enough .^ " 

" Truly is it," answers Adam, kissing her ; " but 
still — I know not — something tells us there is 
labor to be done. Perhaps our allotted task is 
no other than to climb into the sky, which is so 
much more beautiful than earth." 

" Then would we were there now," murmurs 
Eve, *' that no task or duty might come between 
us!" 

They leave the hospitable mansion, and we next 
see them passing down State Street. The clock 
on the old State House points to high noon, when 
the Exchange should be in its glory and present 
the liveliest emblem of what was the sole business 
of life, as regarded a multitude of the foregone 
worldlings. It is over now. The Sabbath of 
eternity has shed its stillness along the street. 
Not even a newsboy assails the two solitary 
passers-by with an extra penny-paper from the 
office of the Times or Mail, containing a full ac- 
count of yesterday's terrible catastrophe. Of all 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



19 



the dull times that merchants and speculators 
have known, this is the very worst ; for, so far as 
they were concerned, creation itself has taken the 
benefit of the Bankrupt Act. After all, it is a 
pity. Those mighty capitalists who had just at- 
tained the wished-for wealth ! Those shrewd 
men of traffic who had devoted so many years to 
the most intricate and artificial of sciences, and 
had barely mastered it when the universal bank- 
ruptcy was announced by peal of trumpet ! Can 
they have been so incautious as to provide no 
currency of the country whither they have gone, 
nor any bills of exchange, or letters of credit 
from the needy on earth to the cash-keepers of 
heaven ? 

Adam and Eve enter a Bank. Start not, ye 
whose funds are treasured there ! You will never 
need them now. Call not for the police. The 
stones of the street and the coin of the vaults are 
of equal value- to this simple pair. Strange 
sight ! They take up the bright gold in handfuls 
and throw it sportively into the air for the sake of 
seeing the glittering worthlessness descend again 
in a shower. They know not that each of those 
small yellow circles was once a magic spell, 
potent to sway men's hearts and mystify their 
moral sense. Here let them pause in the in- 
vestigation of the past. They have discovered 
the mainspring, the life, the very essence of the 
system that had wrought itself into the vitals of 
mankind, and choked their original nature in its 
deadly gripe. Yet how powerless over these 
young inheritors of earth's hoarded wealth ! And 



20 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

here, too, are huge packages of bank-notes, those 
talismanic slips of paper which once had the 
efficacy to build up enchanted palaces like ex- 
halations, and work all kinds of perilous wonders, 
yet were themselves but the ghosts of money, the 
shadows of a shade. How like is this vault to a 
magician's cave when the all-powerful wand is 
broken, and the visionary splendor vanished, and 
the floor strewn with fragments of shattered 
spells, and lifeless shapes, once animated by 
demons ! 

" Everywhere, my dear Eve," observes Adam, 
" we find heaps of rubbish of one kind or another. 
Somebody, I am convinced, has taken pains to 
collect them, but for what purpose ? Perhaps, 
hereafter, we shall be moved to do the like. Can 
that be our business in the world ? " 

" O no, no, Adam ! " answers Eve. " It would 
be better to sit down quietly and look upward to 
the sky." 

They leave the Bank, and in good time ; for 
had they tarried later they would probably have 
encountered some gouty old goblin of a capitalist, 
whose soul could not long be anywhere save in 
the vault with his treasure. 

Next they drop into a jeweller's shop. They 
are pleased with the glow of gems ; and Adam 
twines a string of beautiful pearls around the 
head of Eve, and fastens his own mantle with a 
magnificent diamond brooch. Eve thanks him, 
and views herself with delight in the nearest look- 
ing-glass. Shortly afterward, observing a bouquet 
of roses and other brilliant flowers in a vase of 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 21 

water, she flings away the inestimable pearls, and 
adorns herself with these lovelier gems of nature. 
They charm her with sentiment as well as beauty. 

" Surely they are living beings,'* she remarks 
to Adam. 

" I think so," replies Adam, " and they seem 
to be as little at home in the world as our- 
selves.'' 

We must not attempt to follow every footstep 
of these investigators whom their Creator has com- 
missioned to pass unconscious judgment upon 
the works and ways of the vanished race. By 
this time, being endowed with quick a-nd accurate 
perceptions, they begin to understand the purpose 
of the many things around them. They conject- 
ure for instance, that the edifices of the city were 
erected, not by the immediate hand that made 
the world, but by beings somewhat similar to 
themselves, for shelter and convenience. But how 
will they explain the magnificence of one habita- 
tion as compared with the squalid misery of 
another ? Through what medium can the idea 
of servitude enter their minds ? When will they 
comprehend the great and miserable fact — 
ihe evidences of which appeal to their senses 
everywhere — that one portion of earth's lost 
inhabitants was rolling in luxury while the 
multitude was toiling for scanty food ? A 
wretched change, indeed, must be wrought 
in their own hearts ere they can conceive 
the primal decree of Love to have been so com- 
pletely abrogated, that a brother should ever 
want what his brother had. When their intelli- 



22 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

gence shall have reached so far, Earth's neA/» 
progeny will have little reason to exult over her 
old rejected one. 

Their wanderings have now brought them into 
the suburbs of the city. They stand on a grassy 
brow of a hill at the foot of a granite obelisk 
which points its great finger upwards, as if the 
human family had agreed, by a visible symbol of 
age-long endurance, to offer some high sacrifice 
of thanksgiving or supplication. The solemn 
height of the monument, its deep simplicity, and 
the absence of any vulgar and practical use, all 
strengthen its effect upon Adam and Eve, and 
leave them to interpert it by a purer sentiment 
than the builders thought of expressing. 

" Eve, it is a visible prayer,'' observes Adam. 

*' And we will pray too," she replies. 

Let us pardon these poor children of neither 
father nor mother for so absurdly mistaking the 
purport of the memorial which man founded and 
woman finished on far.-famed Bunker Hill. The 
idea of war is not native to their souls. Nor 
have they sympathies for the brave defenders of 
liberty, since oppression is one of their uncon- 
jectured mysteries. Could they guess that the 
green sward on which they stand so peacefully 
was once strewn with human corpses and purple 
with their blood, it would equally amaze them 
that one generation of men should perpetrate 
such carnage, and that a subsequent generation 
should triumphantly commemorate it. 

With a sense of delight they now stroll across 
green fields and along the margin of a quiet river. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 23 

Not to track them too closely, we next find the 
wanderers entering a Gothic edifice of gray stone, 
where the bygone world has left whatever it 
deemed worthy of record, in the rich library of 
Harvard University. 

No student ever yet enjoyed such solitude and 
silence as now broods within its deep alcoves. 
Little do the present visitors understand what 
opportunities are thrown away upon them. Yet 
Adam looks anxiously at the long rows of volumes, 
those storied heights of human lore, ascending- 
one above another from floor to ceiling. He takes 
up a bulky folio. It opens in his hands as if 
spontaneously to impart the spirit of its author to 
the yet unworn and untainted intellect of the 
fresh-created mortal. He stands poring over 
the regular columns of mystic characters, seem- 
ingly in studious mood ; for the unintelligible 
thought upon the page has a mysterious relation 
to his mind, and makes itself felt as if it were a» 
burden flung upon him. He is even painfully 
perplexed, and grasps vainly at he knows not 
what. O Adam, it is too soon, too soon by at 
least five thousand years, to put on spectacles 
and bury yourself in the alcoves of a library ! 

" What can this be ? '' he murmurs at last. 
*^ Eve, methinks nothing is so desirable as to find 
out the mystery of this big and heavy object 
with its thousand thin divisions. See ! it stares 
me in the face as if it were about to speak ! " 

Eve, by a feminine instinct, is dipping into a 
volume of fashionable poetry, the production 
certainly of the most fortunate of earthly bards, 



24 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

Bince his lay continues in vogue when all tht 
great masters of the lyre have passed into 
oblivion. But let not his ghost be too exultant ! 
The world's one lady tosses the book upon the 
floor and laughs merrily at her husband's 
abstracted mien. 

" My dear Adam," cries she, " you look pensive 
and dismal. Do fling down that stupid thing ; 
for even if it should speak it would not be worth 
attending to. Let us talk with one another, and 
with the sky, and the green earth, and its trees 
and flowers. They will teach us better knowl- 
edge than we can find here." 

" Well, Eve, perhaps you are right," replies 
Adam, with a sort of sigh. " Still I cannot help 
thinking that the interpretation of the riddles 
amid which we have been wandering all day long 
might here be discovered." 

" It may be better not to seek the interpreta- 
tion," persists Eve. '' For my part, the air of 
this place does not suit me. If you love me, 
come away ! " 

She prevails, and rescues him from the mys- 
terious perils of the library. Happy influence 
of woman ! Had he lingered there long enough 
to obtain a clew to its treasures, — as was not 
impossible, his intellect being of human structure^ 
indeed, but with an untransmitted vigor and 
acuteness, — had he then and there become a 
student, the annalist of our poor world would 
soon have recorded the downfall of a second 
Adam. The fatal apple of another Tree of 
Knowledge would have been eaten. All the 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 25 

perversions, and sophistries, and false wisdom so 
aptly mimicking the true, — all the narrow truth, 
so partial that it becomes more deceptive than 
falsehood, — all the wrong principles and worse 
practice, the pernicious examples and mistaken 
rules of life, — all the specious theories which 
turn earth into cloudland and men into shadows, 
— all the sad experience which it took mankind 
so many ages to accumulate, and from which 
they never drew a moral for their future guid- 
ance, — the whole heap of this disastrous lore 
would have tumbled at once upon Adam's head. 
There would have been nothing left for him but 
to take up the already abortive experiment of 
life where we had dropped it, and toil onward 
with it a little further. 

But, blessed in his ignorance, he may still 
enjoy a new world in our worn-out one. Should 
he fall short of good, even as far as we did, he 
has at least the freedom — no worthless one — to 
make errors for himself. And his literature, 
when the progress of centuries shall create it, 
will be no interminably repeated echo of our own 
poetry and reproduction of the images that were 
moulded by our great fathers of song and fiction, 
but a melody never yet heard on earth, and intel- 
lectual forms unbreathed upon by our concep- 
tions. Therefore let the dust of ages gather 
upon the volumes of the library, and in due 
season the roof of the edifice crumble down 
upon the whole. When the second Adam's 
descendants shall have collected as much rubbish 
of their own, it will be time enough to dig into 



26 MOSSES FROM AJV OLD MANSE. 

our ruins and compare the literary advancement 
of two independent races. 

But we are looking forward too far. It seems 
to be the vice of those who have a long past 
behind them. We will return to the new Adam 
and Eve, who, having no reminiscences save dim 
and fleeting visions of a pre-existence, are con- 
tent to live and be happy in the present. 

The day is near its close when these pilgrims, 
who derive their being from no dead progenitors, 
reach the cemetery of Mount Auburn. With 
light hearts — for earth and sky now gladden 
each other with beauty — they tread along the 
winding paths, among marble pillars, mimic 
temples, urns, obelisks, and sarcophagi, some- 
times pausing to contemplate these fantasies of 
human growth, and sometimes to admire the 
flowers wherewith nature converts decay to loveli- 
ness. Can Death, in the midst of his old 
triumphs, make them sensible that they have 
taken up the heavy burden of mortality which a 
whole species had thrown down ? Dust kindred 
to their ovm has never lain in the grave. Will 
they then recognize, and so soon, that Time and 
the elements have an indefeasible claim upon 
their bodies ? Not improbably they may. There 
must have been shadows enough, even amid the 
primal sunshine of their existence, to suggest the 
thought of the soul's incongruity with its circum- 
stances. They have already learned that some- 
thing is to be thrown aside. The idea of Death 
is in theni, or not far off. But, were they to 
choose a symbol for him, it would b^ the butter- 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 27 

fly soaring upward, or the bright angel beckoning 
them aloft, or the child asleep, with soft dreams 
visible through her transparent purity. 

Such a Child, in whitest marble, they have 
found among the monuments of Mount Auburn. 

'' Sweetest Eve," observes Adam, while hand 
in hand they contemplate this beautiful object, 
*' yonder sun has left us, and the whole world is 
fading from our sight. Let us sleep as this 
lovely little figure is sleeping. Our Father only 
knows whether what outward things we have 
possessed to-day are to be snatched from us for- 
ever. But should our earthly life be leaving us 
w4th the departing light, we need not doubt that 
another morn will find us somewhere beneath the 
smile of God. I feel that He has imparted the 
boon of existence never to be resumed." 

"And no matter where we exist," replies Eve, 
** for we shall always be together." 



2S MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



EGOTISM;* 

or, the bosom serpent. 

[ From the unpublished " Allegories of thb 
Heart."] 

" Here he comes ! '' shouted the boys along the 
street. " Here comes the man with a snake in 
his bosom ! " 

This outcry, saluting Herkimer's ears as he 
was about to enter the iron* gate of the EUiston 
mansion, made him pause. It was not without a 
shudder that he found himself on the point of 
meeting his former acquaintance, whom he had 
known in the glory of youth, and whom now, after 
an interval of five years, he was to find the 
victim either of a diseased fancy or a horrible 
physical misfortune. 

" A snake in his bosom ! '^ repeated the young 
sculptor to himself. " It must be he. No second 
man on earth has such a bosom friend. And 
now, my poor Rosina, Heaven grant me wisdom 
to discharge my errand aright ! Woman's faith 
must be strong indeed since thine has not yet 
failed." 

* The physical fact, to which it is here attempted to 
give a moral signification, has been known to occur ia 
more than one instance. 



MOSSES FROM AN' OLD MANSE, 29 

Thus musing, he took his stand at the entrance 
of the gate, and waited until the personage so 
singularly announced should make his appear- 
ance. After an instant or two he beheld the 
figure of a lean man, of unwholesome look, with 
glittering eyes and long black hair, who seemed 
to imitate the motion of a snake ; for, instead of 
walking straight forward with open front, he un- 
dulated along the pavement in a curved line. It 
may be too fanciful to say that something, either 
in his moral or material aspect, suggested the idea 
that a miracle had been wrought by transform- 
ing a serpent into a man, but so imperfectly that 
the snaky nature was yet hidden, and scarcely 
hidden, under the mere outward guise of human- 
ity. Herkimer remarked that his complexion 
had a greenish tinge over its sickly white, remind- 
ing him of a species of marble out of which he 
had once wrought a head of Envy, with her snaky 
locks. 

The wretched being approached the gate, but, 
instead of entering, stopped short, and fixed the 
glitter of his eye full upon the compassionate yet 
steady countenance of the sculptor. 

" It gnaws me ! It gnaws me ! '' he exclaimed. 

And then there was an audible hiss, but 
whether it came from the apparent lunatic's own 
lips,. or was the real hiss of a serpent, might ad- 
mit of a discussion. At all events, it made Her- 
kimer shudder to his heart's core. 

" Do you know me, George Herkimer ? '* asked 
the snake-possessed. 

Herkimer did know him ; but it demanded all 



30 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

the intimate and practical acquaintance with the 
human face, acquired by modelling actual like- 
nesses in clay, to recognize the features of Rod- 
erick Elliston in the visage that now met the 
sculptor's gaze. Yet it was he. It added noth- 
ing to the wonder to reflect that the once brilliant 
young man had undergone this odious and f'^^ar- 
ful change during the no more than five 1: lef 
years of Herkimer's abode at Florence. The 
possibility of such a transformation being granted, 
it was as easy to conceive it effected in a moment 
as in an age. Inexpressibly shocked and start- 
led, it was still the keenest pang when Herkimer 
remembered that the fate of his cousin Rosina, 
the ideal of gentle womanhood, was indissolu- 
bly interwoven with that of a being whom Provi- 
dence seemed to have unhumanized. 

"Elliston! Roderick!" cried he, "I had 
heard of this ; but my conception came far short 
of the truth. What has befallen you t Why do 
I find you thus ? " 

" O, 't is a mere nothing ! A snake ! A snake ! 
The commonest thing in the world. A snake in 
the bosom,— ^that 's all," answered Roderick 
Elliston. " But how is your own breast t " con- 
tinued he, looking the sculptor in the eye with 
the most acute and penetrating glance that it had 
ever been his fortune to encounter. " All pure 
and wholesome ? No reptile there ? By ' my 
faith and conscience, and by the devil within me, 
here is a wonder ! A man without a serpent in 
his bosom ! " 

" Be calm, Elliston," whispered George Herki- 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 31 

mer, laying his hand upon the shoulder of the 
snake-possessed. '' I have crossed the ocean to 
meet you. Listen ! Let us be private. I bring 
a message from Rosina, — from your wife ! " 

'' It gnaws me ! It gnaws me ! " muttered 
Roderick. 

■ Uth this exclamation, the most frequent in 
his mouth, the unfortunate man clutched both 
hands upon his breast as if an intolerable sting 
or torture impelled him to rend it open and let 
out the living mischief, even should it be inter- 
twined with his own life. He then freed himself 
from Herkimer's grasp by a subtle motion, and^ 
gliding through the gate, took refuge in his an- 
tiquated family residence. The sculptor did not 
pursue him. He saw that no available intercourse 
could be expected at such a moment, and was 
desirous, before another meeting, to inquire 
closely into the nature of Roderick's disease and 
the circumstances that had reduced him to so 
lamentable a condition. He succeeded in obtain- 
ing the necessary information from an eminent 
medical gentleman. 

Shortly after Elliston's separation from his wife^ 
— now nearly four years ago, — his associates had 
observed a singular gloom spreading over his 
daily life, like those chill, gray mists that some- 
times steal away the sunshine from a summer's 
morning. The symptoms caused them endless 
perplexity. They knew not whether ill health 
were robbing his spirits of elasticity, or whether a 
canker of the mind was gradually eating, as such 
cankers do, from his moral system into the phys- 



32 MOSSES FROM AJV OLD MANSE, 

ical frame, which is but the shadow of the former. 
They looked for the root of this trouble in his 
shattered schemes of domestic bliss, — wilfully 
shattered by himself, — but could not be satisfied 
of its existence there. Some thought that their 
once-brilliant friend was in an incipient stage of 
insanity, of which his passionate impulses had 
perhaps been the forerunners ; others prognos- 
ticated a general blight and gradual decline. 
From Roderick's own lips they could learn noth- 
ing. More than once, it is true, he had been 
heard to say, clutching his hands convulsively 
upon his breast, ** It gnaws me ! It gnaws me ! *' 
but, by different auditors, a great diversity of ex- 
planation was assigned to this ominous expression. 
What could it be, that gnawed the breast of Rod- 
erick Elliston ? Was it sorrow ? Was it merely 
the tooth of physical disease ? Or, in his reckless 
course, often verging upon profligacy, if not plung- 
ing into its depths, had he been guilty of some 
deed, which made his bosom a prey to the dead- 
lier fangs of remorse ? There was plausible 
ground for each of these conjectures ; but it must 
not be concealed that more than one elderly 
gentleman, the victim of good cheer and slothful 
habits, magisterially pronounced the secret of the 
whole matter to be Dyspepsia ! 

Meanwhile, Roderick seemed aware how gen- 
erally he had become the subject of curiosity and 
conjecture, and, with a morbid repugnance to 
such notice, or to any notice whatsoever, estranged 
himself from all companionship. Not merely the 
eye of man was a horror to him ; not merely the 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 35, 

light 6.: a friend's countenance ; but even the 
blessed sunshine, likewise, which, in its universal 
beneficence, typifies the radiance of the Creator's, 
face, expressing His love for all the creatures of 
His hand. The dusky twilight was now too trans- 
parent for Roderick Elliston ; the blackest mid- 
night was his chosen hour to steal abroad ; and 
if ever he were seen, it was when the watchman's 
lantern gleamed upon his figure, gliding along the 
street, with his hands clutched upon his bosom,, 
still muttering, " It gnaws me ! It gnaws me ! " 
What could it be that gnawed him ? 

After a time, it became known that Elliston was 
in the habit of resorting to all the noted quacks 
that infested the city, or whom money would tempt 
to journey thither from a distance. By one of 
these persons, in the exultation of a supposed 
cure, it was proclaimed far and wide, by dint of 
handbills and little pamphlets on dingy paper, 
that a distinguished gentleman, Roderick Elliston,. 
Esq., had been relieved of a Snake in his stom-^ 
ach ! So here was the monstrous secret, ejected 
from its lurking-place into public view, in all its 
horrible deformity. The mystery was out ; but 
not so the bosom serpent. He, if it were any- 
thing but a delusion, still lay coiled in his living; 
den. The empiric's cure had been a sham, the 
effect, it was supposed, of some stupefying drug, 
which more nearly caused the death of the patient 
than of the odious reptile that possessed him.. 
When Roderick Elliston regained entire sensibil- 
ity, it was to find his misfortune the town talk, — - 
the more than nine-days' wonder and horror, — - 
3 



54 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

^^hile, at his bosom, he felt the sickening motion 
<ji a thing alive, and the gnawing of that restless 
fang, which seemed to gratify at once a physical 
appetite and a fiendish spite. 

He summoned the old black servant, who had 
been bred up in his father's house, and was a 
r;iddle-aged man while Roderick lay in his cradle, 

" Scipio ! '' he began ;. and then paused, with 
his arms folded over his heart. " What do people 
say of me, Scipio ? '' 

*' Sir ! my poor master ! that you had a serpent 
in your bosom," answered the servant, wdth hesi- 
tation. 

" And what else ? " asked Roderick, wdth a 
ghastly look at the man, 

''Nothing else, dear master," replied Scipio; 
*' only that the doctor gave you a powder, and 
that the snake leaped out upon the floor." 

" No, no ! " muttered Roderick to himself, as 
he shook his head, and pressed his hands wdth a 
more convulsive force upon his breast, " I feel 
him still. It gnaws me ! It gnaws me ! " 

From this time the miserable sufferer ceased 
to shun the world, but rather solicited and forced 
himself upon the notice of acquaintances and 
strangers. It was partly the result of desperation 
on finding that the cavern of his own bosom had 
not proved deep and dark enough to hide the 
secret, even while it was so secure a fortress for the 
loathsome fiend that had crept into it. But still 
more, this craving for notoriety was a symptom 
of the intense morbidness which now pervaded 
Lis nature. All persons, chronically diseased, 



MOSSES FROM AA^ OLD MANSE. 35 

are egotists, whether the disease be of the mind 
or body ; whether it be sin, sorrow, or merely the 
more tolerable calamity of some endless pain, or 
mischief among the cords of mortal life. Such 
individuals are made acutely conscious of a self, 
by the torture in which it dwells. Self, therefore, 
grows to be so prominent an object with them 
that they cannot but present it to the face of every 
casual passer-by. There is a pleasure — perhaps 
the greatest of which the sufferer is susceptible — 
in displaying the wasted or ulcerated limb, or the 
cancer in the breast ; and the fouler the crime, 
with so much the more difficulty does the perpe- 
trator prevent it from thrusting up its snake-like 
head to frighten the world ; for it is that cancer, 
or that crime, which constitutes their respective 
individuality. Roderick Elliston, who, a little 
while before, had held himself so scornfully above 
the common lot of men, now paid full allegiance 
to this humiliating law. The snake in his bosom 
seemed the symbol of a monstrous egotism ta 
which everything was referred, and which he pam- 
pered, night and day, with a continual and 
exclusive sacrifice of devil-worship. 

He soon exhibited what most people considered 
indubitable tokens of insanity. In some of his 
moods, strange to say, he prided and gloried him- 
self on being marked out from the ordinary 
experience of mankind, by the possession of a 
double nature, and a life within a life. He ap- 
peared to imagine that the snake was a divinity^ 
— not celestial, it is true, but darkly infernal, — ■ 
and that he thence derived an eminence and a 



36 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

sanctity, horrid, indeed, yet more desirable than 
whatever ambition aims at. Thus he drew his 
misery around him like a regal mantle, and 
looked down triumphantly upon those whose 
vitals nourished no deadly monster. Oftener, 
however, his human nature asserted its empire 
over him in the shape of a yearning for fellowship. 
It grew to be his custom to spend the whole day 
in wandering about the streets, aimlessly, unless 
it might be called an aim to establish a species 
of brotherhood between himself and the world. 
With cankered ingenuity, he sought out his own 
disease in every breast. Whether insane or not, 
he showed so keen a perception of frailty, error, 
and vice, that many persons gave him credit for 
being possessed not merely with a serpent, but 
with an actual fiend, who imparted this evil 
faculty of recognizing whatever was ugliest in 
man's heart. 

For instance, he met an individual, who, for 
thirty years, had cherished a hatred against his 
own brother. Roderick, amidst the throng of 
the street, laid his hand on this man's chest, and 
looking full into his forbidding face, — 

" How is the snake to-day ? " he inquired, with 
a mock expression of sympathy. 

" The snake ! " exclaimed the brother-hater ; 
" what do you mean ? " 

" The snake ! The snake ! Does he gnaw 
you ? " persisted Roderick. " Did you take 
counsel with him this morning, when you should 
have been saying your prayers ? Did he sting, 
when you thought of your brother's health, wealth, 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 37 

and good repute ? Did he caper for joy, when 
you remembered the profligacy of his only son ? 
And whether he stung, or whether he frolicked, 
did you feel his poison throughout your body 
and soul, converting everything to sourness and 
bitterness ? That is the way of such serpents. 
I have learned the whole nature of them from 
my own ! " 

'' Where is the police ? " roared the object of 
Roderick's persecution, at the same time giving 
an instinctive clutch to his breast. " Why is this 
lunatic allowed to go at large ? '' 

" Ha, ha ! " chuckled Roderick, releasing his 
grasp of the man. " His bosom serpent has stung 
him, then ! '' 

Often it pleased the unfortunate young man to 
vex people with a lighter satire, yet still charac- 
terized by somewhat of snake-like virulence. 
One day he encountered an ambitious statesman, 
and gravely inquired after the welfare of his boa- 
constrictor ; for of that species, Roderick affirmed, 
this gentleman's serpent must need be, since its 
appetite was enormous enough to devour the 
whole country and constitution. At another 
time, he stopped a close-fisted old fellow, of great 
wealth, but who skulked about the city in the 
guise of a scarecrow, with a patched blue surtout, 
brown hat, and mouldy boots, scraping pence to- 
gether, and picking up rusty nails. Pretending 
to look earnestly at this respectable person's 
stomach, Roderick assured him that his snake 
was a copper-head, and had been generated 
by the immense quantities of that base metal, 



38 . MOSSES FROM AiV OLD MANSE. 

with which he daily defiled his fingers. Again, 
he assaulted a man of rubicund visage, and told 
him that few bosom serpents had more of the 
Devil in them than those that breed in the vats 
of a distillery. The next whom Roderick honored 
with his attention was a distinguished clergyman, 
who happened just then to be engaged in a theo- 
logical controversy, where human v/rath was 
more perceptible than divine inspiration. 

"" You have swallowed a snake in a cup of 
sacramental wine," quoth he. 

" Profane wretch ! " exclaimed the divine ; but, 
nevertheless, his hand stole to his breast. 

He met a person of sickly sensibility, who, on 
some early disappointment, had retired from the 
world, and thereafter held no intercourse with his 
fellow-men, but brooded sullenly or passionately 
over the irrevocable past. This man's very 
heart, if Roderick might be believed, had been 
changed into a serpent, which would finally tor- 
ment both him and itself to death. Observing a 
married couple, whose domestic troubles were 
matter of notoriety, he condoled with both on 
having mutually taken a house-adder to their 
bosoms. To an envious author, who depreciated 
works which he could never equal, he said that 
his snake was the slimiest and filthiest of all the 
reptile tribe, but was fortunately without a sting. 
A man of impure life, and a brazen face, asking 
Roderick if there were any serpent in his breast, 
he told him that there was, and of the same 
species that once tortured Don Rodrigo, the Goth. 
He took a fair young girl by the hand, and gaz- 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



39 



ing sadly into her eyes, warned her that she 
cherished a serpent of the deadhest kind within 
her gentle breast ; and the world found the truth 
of those ominous words, when, a few months 
afterwards, the poor girl died of love and shame. 
Two ladies, rivals in fashionable life, who tor- 
mented one another with a thousand little stings 
of w^omanish spite, were given to understand that 
each of their hearts was a nest of diminutive 
snakes, which did quite as much mischief as one 
great one. 

But nothing seemed to please Roderick better 
than to lay hold of a person infected with jealousy, 
w^hich he represented as an enormous green 
reptile, with an ice-cold length of body, and the 
sharpest sting of any snake save one. 

" And what one is that ? " asked a bystander, 
overhearing him. 

It was a dark-browed man who put the ques- 
tion ; he had an evasive eye, which, in the course 
of a dozen years, had looked no mortal directly 
in the face. There was an ambiguity about this 
person's character, — a stain upon his reputation, 
— yet none could tell precisely of what nature, 
although the city gossips, male and female, 
whispered the most atrocious surmises. Until a 
recent period he had followed the sea, and was, 
in fact, the very shipmaster whom George Herki- 
mer had encountered, under such singular circum- 
stances, in the Grecian Archipelago, 

'' What bosom serpent has the sharpest sting ? " 
repeated this man ; but he put the question as if 
by a reluctant necessity, and grew pale while he 
was uttering it. 



40 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

" Why need you ask ? '^ replied Roderick, with 
a look of dark intelligence. ** Look into youi 
own breast. Hark ! my serpent bestirs himself ! 
He acknowledges the presence of a master 
fiend!" 

And then, as the bystanders afterwards affirmed, 
a hissing sound was heard, apparently in 
Roderick Elliston's breast. It was said, too, that 
an answering hiss came from the vitals of the 
shipmaster, as if a snake were actually lurking 
there and had been aroused by the call of its 
brother reptile. If there were in fact any such 
sound it might have been caused by a malicious 
exercise of ventriloquism on the part of Roderick. 

Thus, making his own actual serpent — if a 
serpent there actually was in his bosom — the type 
of each man's fatal error, or hoarded sin, or un- 
quiet conscience, and striking his sting so unre- 
morsefully into the sorest spot, we may well 
imagine that Roderick became the pest of the 
city. Nobody could elude him ; none could with- 
stand him. He grappled with the ugliest truth 
that he could lay his hand on, and com- 
pelled his adversary to do the same. Strange 
spectacle in human life where it is the instinctive 
effort of one and all to hide those sad realities, 
and leave them undisturbed beneath a heap of 
superficial topics, which constitute the materials 
of intercourse between man and man ! It was not 
to be tolerated that Roderick EUiston should 
break through the tacit compact by which the 
world has done its best to secure repose without 
relinquishing evil. The victims of his malicious 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 41 

remarks, it is true, had brothers enough to keep 
them in countenance ; for, by Roderick's theory, 
every mortal bosom harbored either a brood of 
small serpents or one overgrown monster that 
had devoured all the rest. Still the city could 
not bear this new apostle. It was demanded by 
nearly all, and particularly by the most respect- 
able inhabitants, that Roderick should no longer 
be permitted to violate the received rules of 
decorum by obtruding his own bosom serpent to 
the public gaze, and dragging those of decent 
people from their lurking-places. 

Accordingly, his relatives interfered and placed 
him in a private asylum for the insane. When 
the news was noised abroad, it was observed that 
many persons walked the streets with freer counte- 
nances and covered their breasts less carefully 
with their hands. 

His confinement, however, although it contri- 
buted not a little to the peace of the town, oper- 
ated unfavorably upon Roderick himself. In 
solitude his melancholy grew more black and 
sullen. He spent whole days — indeed, it was his 
sole occupation — in communing with the serpent. 
A conversation was sustained, in which, as it 
seemed, the hidden monster bore a part, though 
unintelligibly to the listeners, and inaudible ex- 
cept in a hiss. Singular as it may appear, the 
sufferer had now contracted a sort of affection 
for his tormentor, mingled, however, with the in- 
tensest loathing and horror. Nor were such dis- 
cordant emotions incompatible. Each, on the 
contrary, imparted strength and poignancy to its 



42 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

opposite. Horrible love,— horrible antipathy, 

embracing one another in his bosom, and both 
concentrating themselves upon a being that had 
crept into his vitals, or been engendered there 
and v^hich was nourished with his food, and lived 
upon his life, and was as intimate with him as his 
own heart, and yet was the foulest of all created 
things ! But not the less was it the true type of 
a morbid nature. 

Sometimes, in his moments of rage and bitter 
hatred against the snake and himself, Roderick 
determined to be the death of him, even at the ex- 
pense of his own life. Once he attempted it by 
starvation ; but, while the wretched man was on 
the point of famishing, the monster seemed to 
feed upon his heart, and to thrive and wax game- 
some, as if it were his sweetest and most congen- 
ial diet. Then he privily took a dose of active 
poison, imagining that it would not fail to kill 
either himself or the devil that possessed him, or 
both together. Another mistake ; for if Roderick 
had not yet been destroyed by his own poisoned 
heart, nor the snake by gnawing it, they had little 
to fear from arsenic or corrosive sublimate. In- 
deed, the venomous pest appeared to operate as 
an antidote against all other poisons. The phy- 
sicians tried to suffocate the fiend with tobacco- 
smoke. He breathed it as freely as if it were his 
native atmosphere. Again, they drugged their 
patient with opium and drenched him with in- 
toxicating liquors, hoping that the snake might 
thus be reduced to stupor and perhaps be ejected 
from the stomach. They succeeded in rendering 



MOSSES FROM AA^ OLD MANSE, 43 

Roderick insensible ; but, placing their hands upon 
his breast, they were inexpressibly horror-stricken 
to feel the monster wriggling, twining, and dart- 
ing to and fro within his narrow limits, evidently 
enlivened by the opium or alcohol, and incited to 
unusual feats of activity. Thenceforth they gave 
up all attempts at cure or palliation. The doomed 
sufferer submitted to his fate, resumed his former 
loathsome affection for the bosom fiend, and 
spent whole miserable days before a looking-glass, 
with his mouth wide open, watching, in hope and 
horror, to catch a glimpse of the snake's head far 
down within his throat. It is supposed that he 
succeeded ; for the attendants once heard a fren- 
zied shout, and, rushing into the room, found 
Roderick lifeless upon the floor. 
- He was kept but little longer under re- 
straint. After minute investigation, the medical 
directors of the asylum decided that his mental 
disease did not amount to insanity nor would 
warrant his confinement, especially as its influ- 
ence upon his spirits was unfavorable, and might 
produce the evil which it was meant to remedy. 
His eccentricities were doubtless great; he had 
habitually violated many of the customs and prej- 
udices of society ; but the world was not, with- 
out surer ground, entitled to treat him as a mad- 
man. On this decision of such competent 
authority Roderick was released, and had re- 
turned to his native city the very day before his 
encounter with George Herkimer. 

As soon as possible after learning these partic- 
ulars the sculptor, together with a sad and trem- 



44 MOSSES FROM AiV OLD MANSE. 

ulous companion, sought EUiston at his own 
house. It was a large, sombre edifice of wood, 
with pilasters and a balcony, and was divided 
from one of the principal streets by a terrace of 
three elevations, which was ascended by succes- 
sive flights of stone steps. Some immense old 
elms almost concealed the front of the mansion. 
This spacious and once magnificent family resi- 
dence was built by a grandee of the race early in 
the past century, at which epoch, land being of 
small comparative value, the garden and other 
grounds had formed quite an extensive domain. 
Although a portion of the ancestral heritage had 
been alienated, there was still a shadowy enclos- 
ure in the rear of the mansion where a student, 
or a dreamer, or a man of stricken heart might 
lie all day upon the grass, amid the solitude of 
murmuring boughs, and forget that a city had 
grown up around him. 

Into this retirement the sculptor and his com- 
panion were ushered by Scipio, the old black 
servant, whose wrinkled visage grew almost 
sunny with intelligence and joy as he paid his 
humble greetings to one of the two visitors. 

" Remain in the arbor," whispered the sculptor 
to the figure that leaned upon his arm. ^^ You 
will know whether and when to make your ap- 
pearance." 

"- God will teach me," was the reply. " May 
He support me too ! " 

Roderick was reclining on the margin of a 
fountain, which gushed into the fleckered sun- 
shine with the same clear sparkle and the same 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 45 

voice of airy quietude as when trees of primeval 
growth flung their shadows across its bosom. 
How strange is the life of a fountain ! — born at 
every moment, yet of an age coeval with the 
rocks, and far surpassing the venerable antiquity 
of a forest. 

"You are come! I have expected you,'^ said 
Elliston, when he became aware of the sculptor's 
presence. 

His manner was very different from that of 
the preceding day, — quiet, courteous, and, as 
Herkimer thought, watchful both over his guest 
and himself. This unnatural restraint was almost 
the only trait that betokened anything amiss. 
He had just thrown a book upon the grass, 
M^here it lay half opened, thus disclosing itself to 
be a natural history of the serpent tribe, illus- 
trated by life-like plates. Near it lay that bulky 
volume, the Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy 
Taylor, full of cases of conscience, and in which 
most men, possessed of a conscience, may find 
something applicable to their purpose. 

" You see," observed Elliston, pointing to the 
book of serpents, while a smile gleamed upon 
his lips, " I am making an effort to become 
better acquainted with my bosom friend ; but I 
find nothing satisfactory in this volume. If I 
mistake not, he will prove to be sui generis, and 
akin to no other reptile in creation. '^ 

" Whence came this strange calamity ? '' in- 
quired the sculptor. 

** My sable friend Scipio has a story," replied 
Roderick, "of a snake that had lurked in this 



46 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

fountain, — pure and innocent as it looks, — ever 
since it was known to the first settlers. This in- 
sinuating personage once crept into the vitals of 
my great-grandfather and dwelt there many 
years, tormenting the old gentleman beyond 
mortal endurance. In short, it is a family pecul- 
iarity. But, to tell you the truth, I have no 
faith in this idea of the snake's being an heir- 
loom. He is my own snake, and no man's else." 

"' But what was his origin ? " demanded 
Herkimer. 

*' O, there is poisonous stuff in any man's heart 
sufficient to generate a brood of serpents," said 
Elliston, with a hollow laugh. "• You should 
have heard my homilies to the good towns- 
people. Positively, I deem myself fortunate in 
having bred but a single serpent. You, however, 
have none in your bosom, and therefore cannot 
sympathize with the rest of the world. It gnaws 
me ! It gnaws me ! " 

With this exclamation, Roderick lost his self- 
control and threw himself upon the grass, testify- 
ing his agony by intricate writhings, in which 
Herkimer could not but fancy a resemblance to 
the motions of a snake. Then, likewise, was 
heard that frightful hiss, which often ran through 
the sufferer's speech, and crept between the 
words and syllables without interrupting their 
succession. 

"This is awful indeed!" exclaimed the 
sculptor, — " an awful infliction, whether it be 
actual or imaginary. Tell me, Roderick Elliston, 
is there any remedy for this loathsome evil ? " 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



47 



"Yes, but an impossible one," muttered 
Roderick, as he lay wallowing with his face in 
the grass. " Could I for one instant forget my- 
self, the serpent might not abide within me. It 
is my diseased self-contemplation that has en- 
gendered and nourished him." 

" Then forget yourself, my husband," said a 
gentle voice above him ; " forget yourself in the 
idea of another ! " 

Rosina had emerged from the arbor, and was 
bending over him with the shadow of his anguish 
reflected in her countenance, yet so mingled with 
hope and unselfish love that all anguish seemed 
but an earthly shadow and a dream. She 
touched Roderick with her hand. A tremor 
shivered through his frame. At that moment, if 
report be trustworthy, the sculptor beheld a 
waving motion through the grass, and heard a 
tinkling sound, as if something had plunged into 
the fountain. Be the truth as it might, it is cer- 
tain that Roderick EUiston sat up like a man 
renewed, restored to his right mind, and rescued 
from the fiend which had so miserably overcome 
him in the battle-field of his own breast. 

" Rosina I " cried he, in broken and passionate 
tones, but with nothing of the wild wail that had 
haunted his voice so long, " forgive ! forgive ! " 

Her happy tears bedewed his face. 

" The punishment has been severe," observed 
the sculptor. " Even Justice might now forgive ; 
how much more a woman's tenderness ! Rod- 
erick Elliston, whether the serpent was a phys- 
ical reptile, or whether the morbidness of your 



48 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

nature suggested that symbol to your fancy, the 
moral of the story is not the less true and strong. 
A tremendous Egotism, manifesting itself in your 
case in the form of jealousy, is as fearful a fiend 
as ever stole into the human heart. Can a 
breast, where it has dwelt so long, be puri- 
fied ? " 

" O yes," said Rosina, with a heavenly smile. 
*' The serpent was but a dark fantasy, and what 
it typified was as shadowy as itself. The past, 
dismal as it seems, shall fling no" gloom upon the 
future. To give it its due importance we must 
think of it but as an anecdote in our Eternity.'' 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



49 



THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET. 

[From the unpublished ^* Allegories of the 
Heart.^'J 

*' I have here attempted/' said Roderick, un- 
folding a few sheets of manuscript, as he sat with 
Rosina and the sculptor in the summer-house, 
— " I have attempted to seize hold of a person- 
age who glides past me, occasionally, in my walk 
through life. My former sad experience, as you 
know, has gifted me with some degree of insight 
into the gloomy mysteries of the human heart, 
through which I have wandered like one astray 
in a dark cavern, with his torch fast flickering 
to extinction. But this man, this class of men, 
is a hopeless puzzle." 

" Well, but propound him,'' said the sculptor* 
" Let us have an idea of him, to begin with." 

"Why, indeed," replied Roderick, "he is such 
a being as I could conceive you to carve out of 
marble, and some yet unrealized perfection of 
human science to endow with an exquisite mock- 
ery of intellect ; but still there lacks the last in- 
estimable touch of a divine Creator. He looks 
like a man ; and, perchance, like a better speci- 
men of man than you ordinarily meet. You 
might esteem him wise ; he is capable of cultiva- 
4 



50 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

tion and refinement, and has at least an external 
conscience ; but the demands that spirit makes - 
upon spirit are precisely those to which he can- 
not respond. When at last you come close to 
him you find him chill and unsubstantial, — a 
mere vapor." 

'' I believe," said Rosina, *' I have a glimmering 
idea of what you mean." 

'^ Then be thankful," answered her husband, 
smiling ; ^' but do not anticipate any further 
illumination from what I am about to read, I 
have here imagined such a man to be — what, prob- 
ably, he never is — conscious of the deficiency 
in his spiritual organization. Methinks the 
result would be a sense of cold unreality where- 
with he would go shivering through the world, 
longing to exchange his load of ice for any bur- 
den of real grief that fate could fling upon a 
human being." 

Contenting himself with this preface, Roderick 
began to read. 

In a certain old gentleman's last will and testa- 
ment there appeared a bequest, which, as his final 
thought and deed, w^as singularly in keeping with 
a long life of melancholy eccentricity. He de- 
vised a considerable sum for establishing a fund, 
the interest of which was to be expended, an- 
nually forever, in preparing a Christmas Banquet 
for ten of the most miserable persons that could 
be found. It seemed not to be the testator's pur- 
pose to make these half a score of sad hearts 
merry, but to provide that the stern or fierce 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



SI 



expression of human discontent should not be 
drowned, even for that one holy and joyful day, 
amid the acclamations of festal gratitude which 
all Christendom sends up. And he desired, 
likewise, to perpetuate his own remonstrance 
against the earthly course of Providence, and his 
sad and sour dissent from those systems of relig- 
ion or philosophy which either find sunshine in 
the world or draw it down from heaven. 

The task of inviting the guests, or of selecting 
among such as might advance their claims to par- 
take of this dismal hospitality, was confided to 
the two trustees or stewards of the fund. These 
gentlemen, Hke their deceased friend, were sombre 
humorists, who made it their principal occupation 
to number the sable threads in the web of human 
life, and drop all the golden ones out of the reck- 
oning. They performed their present office with 
integrity and judgment. The aspect of the as- 
sembled company, .on the day of the first festival, 
might not, it is true, have satisfied every beholder 
that these were especially the individuals, chosen 
forth from all the world, whose griefs were wor~ 
thy to stand as indicators of the mass of human 
suffering. Yet, after due consideration, it could 
not be disputed that here was a variety of hope- 
less discomfort, which, if it sometimes arose from 
causes apparently inadequate was thereby only 
the shrewder imputation against the nature and 
mechanism of life. 

The arrangements and decorations of the ban- 
quet were probably intended to signify that death 
in life which had been the testator's definition of 



52 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

existence. The hall, illuminated by torches, was 
hung round with curtains of deep and dusky 
purple, and adorned with branches of cypress and 
wreaths of artificial flowers, imitative of such as 
used to be strewn over the dead. A sprig of pars- 
ley was laid by every plate. The main reservoir 
of wine was a sepulchral urn of silver, whence the 
liquor was distributed around the table in small 
vases, accurately copied from those that held the 
tears of ancient mourners. Neither had the 
stewards — if it were their taste that arranged 
these details — forgotten the fantasy of the old 
Egyptians, who seated a skeleton at every festive 
board, and mocked their own merriment with the 
imperturbable grin of a death's-head. Such a 
fearful guest, shrouded in a black mantle, sat now 
at the head of the table. It was whispered, I 
know not with what truth, that the testator him- 
self had once walked the visible world with the 
machinery of that same skeleton, and that it wa^ 
one of the stipulations of his will, that he should 
thus be permitted to sit, from year to year, at the 
banquet which he had instituted. If so, it was 
perhaps covertly implied that he had cherished 
no hopes of bliss beyond the grave to compen- 
sate for the evils which he felt or imagined here. 
And if, in their bewildered conjectures as to the 
purpose of earthly existence, the banqueters 
should throw aside the veil, and cast an inquiring 
glance at this figure of death, as seeking thence 
the solution otherwise unattainable, the only 
reply would be a stare of the vacant eye-caverns 
and a grin of the skeleton jaws. Such was the 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 53 

response that the dead man had fancied himself 
to receive when he asked of Death to solve the 
riddle of his life ; and it was his desire to repeat 
it when the guests of his dismal hospitaHty 
should find themselves perplexed with the same 
question. 

" What means that wreath ? *' asked several of 
the company, while viewing the decorations of 
the table. 

They alluded to a VvTcath of cypress, which was 
held on high by a skeleton arm, protruding from 
within the black mantle. 

" It is a crown," said one of the stewards, " not 
for the worthiest, but for the wofulest when he 
shall prove his claim to it." 

The guest earliest bidden to the festival was' 
a man of soft and gentle character, who had not 
energy to struggle against the heavy despondency 
to which his temperament rendered him liable ; 
and therefore with nothing outwardly to excuse 
him from happiness, he had spent a life of quiet 
misery that made his blood torpid, and weighed 
upon his breath, and sat like a ponderous night- 
fiend upon every throb of his unresisting heart. 
His wretchedness seemed as deep as his original 
nature, if not identical with it. It was the mis- 
fortune of a second guest to cherish within his 
bosom a diseased heart, which had become so 
wretchedly sore that the continual and unavoid- 
able rubs of the world, the blow of an enemy, the 
careless jostle of a stranger, and even the faithful 
and loving touch of a friend, alike made ulcers in 
it. As is the habit of people thus afflicted, he 



54 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

found his chief employment in exhibiting these 
miserable sores to any who would give them- 
selves the pain of viewing them. A third guest 
was a hypochondriac, whose imagination wrought 
necromancy in his outward and inward world, 
and caused him to see monstrous faces in the 
household fire, and dragons in the clouds of sun- 
set, and fiends in the guise of beautiful women, 
and something ugly or wicked beneath all the 
pleasant surfaces of nature. His neighbor at 
table was one who, in his early youth, had trusted 
mankind too much, and hoped too highly in 
their behalf, and, in meeting with many disap- 
pointments, had become desperat ly soured. 
For several years back this misanthrope had 
employed himself in accumulating motives for 
hating and despising his race, — such as murder, 
lust, treachery, ingratitude, faithlessness of trust- 
ed friends, instinctive vices of children, impurity 
of women, hidden guilt in men of saint-like as- 
pect, — and, in short, all manner of black real- 
ities that sought to decorate themselves with 
outward grace or glory. But at every atrocious 
fact that was added to his catalogue, at every 
increase of the sad knowledge which he spent his 
life to collect, the native impulses of the poor 
man's loving and confiding heart made him groan 
with anguish. Next, with his heavy brow bent 
dow^nward, there stole into the hall a man natu- 
rally earnest and impassionate, who from his im- 
memorial infancy, had felt the consciousness of a 
high message to the world; but, essaying to 
deliver it, had found either no voice or form of 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



55 



speech, or else no ears to listen. Therefore his 
whole life was a bitter questioning of himself : 
*^Why have not men acknowledged my mission ? 
Am I not a self-deluding fool ? What business 
have I on earth ? Where is my grave ? '' Through- 
out the festival, he quaffed frequent draughts 
from the sepulchral urn of wine, hoping thus to 
quench the celestial fire that tortured his own 
breast and could not benefit his race. 

Then there entered, having flung away a ticket 
for a ball, a gay gallant of yesterday, who had 
found four or five wrinkles in his brow, and more 
gray hairs than he could well number on his head. 
Endowed with sense and feeling, he had never- 
theless spent his youth in folly, but had reached 
at last that dreary point in life where Folly quits 
us of her own accord, leaving us to make friends 
with Wisdom if we can. Thus, cold and desolate, 
he had come to seek Wisdom at the banquet, 
and wondered if the skeleton were she. To eke 
out the company, the stewards had invited a dis- 
tressed poet from his home in the almshouse, 
and a melancholy idiot from the street-corner. 
The latter had just the glimmering of sense that 
w^as sufficient to make him conscious of a vacancy, 
which the poor fellow, all his life long, had mistily 
sought tofill up with intelligence, wandering up 
and down the streets, and groaning miserably 
because his attempts were ineffectual. The only 
lady in the hall was one who had fallen short of 
absolute and perfect beauty, merely by the trifling 
defect of a slight cast in her left eye. But this 
blemish, minute as it was, so shocked the pure 



56 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

ideal of her soul, rather than her vanity, that she 
passed her Hfe in soUtude, and veiled her coun- 
tenance even from her own gaze. So the skele- 
ton sat shrouded at one end of the table, and 
this poor lady at the other. 

One other guest remains to be described. He 
was a young man of smooth brow, fair cheek, 
and fashionable mien. So far as his exterior de- 
veloped him, he might much more suitably have- 
found a place at some merry Christmas table,, 
than have been numbered among the blighted, 
fate-stricken, fancy-tortured set of ill-starred ban- 
queters. Alurmurs arose among the guests as 
they noted the glance of general scrutiny which 
the intruder threw over his companions. What 
had he to do among them ? Why did not the 
skeleton of the dead founder of the feast unbend 
its rattling joints, arise, and motion the unwel- 
come stranger from the board ? 

^' Shameful ! " said the morbid man, while a 
new ulcer broke out in his heart. "' He comes 
to mock us ! — we shall be the jest of his tavern 
friends ! — he will make a farce of our miseries, 
and bring it out upon the stage ! '' 

'' O, never mind him ! " said the hypochon- 
driac, smiling sourly. " He shall feast from 
yonder tureen of viper-soup ; and if there is a 
fricassee of scorpions on the table, pray let him 
have his share of it. For the dessert, he shall 
taste the apples of Sodom. Then, if he like our 
Christmas fare, let him return again next year ! " 

" Trouble him not," murmured the melancholy 
man, with gentleness. " What matters it whether 



MOSSES FROM AA' OLD MANSE. 



57 



the consciousness of misery come a few years 
sooner or later ? If this youth deem himself 
happy now, yet let him sit with us for the sake 
of the wretchedness to come." 

The poor idiot approached the young man 
with that mournful aspect of vacant inquiry which 
his face continually wore, and which caused 
people to say that he was always in search of his 
missing wits. After no little examination he 
touched the stranger's hand, but immediately 
d^ew back his own, shaking his head and shiver- 
ing. 
• " Cold, cold, cold ! " muttered the idiot. 

The young man shivered too, and smiled. 

"Gentlemen, and you, 'madam," said one of 
the stewards of the festival, " do not conceive sa- 
ill either of our caution or judgment, as to im- 
agine that we have admitted this young stranger 
— Gervayse Hastings by name — without a full 
investisration and thouo^htful balance of his claims. 
Trust me, not a guest at the table is better en- 
titled to his seat." 

The steward's guaranty was perforce satisfac- 
tory. The company, therefore, took their places, 
and addressed themselves to the serious business 
of the feast, but were soon disturbed by the 
hypochondriac, who thrust back his chair, com- 
plaining that a dish of stewed toads and vipers 
was set before him, and that there was green 
ditch-water in his cup of wine. This mistake 
being amended, he quietly resumed his seat. 
The wine, as it flowed freely from the sepulchral 
urn, seemed to come imbued with all gloomy 



58 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

inspirations ; so that its influence was not to 
cheer, but either to sink the revellers into a 
deeper melancholy, or elevate their spirits to an 
enthusiasm of wretchedness. The conversation 
was various. They told sad stories about people 
who might hav^ been worthy guests at such a 
festival as the present. They talked of grisly 
incidents in human history ; of strange crimes^ 
which, if truly considered, were but convulsions 
of agony ; of some lives that had been altogether 
wretched, and of others, which, wearing a general 
semblance of happiness, had yet been deformed^ 
sooner or later, by misfortune, as by the intru- 
sion of a grim face at a banquet ; of death-bed 
scenes, and what dark intimations might be 
gathered from the words of dying men ; of sui- 
cide, and whether the more eligible mode were 
by halter, knife, poison, drowning, gradual starv- 
ation, or the fumes of charcoal. The majority 
of the guests, as is the custom with people 
thoroughly and profoundly sick at heart, were 
anxious to make their own woes the theme of 
discussion, and prove themselves most excellent 
in anguish. The misanthropist went deep into 
the philosophy of evil, and wandered about in 
the darkness, with now and then a gleam of dis- 
colored light hovering on ghastly shapes and 
horrid scenery. Many a miserable thought, such 
as men have stumbled upon from age to age, did 
he now rake up again, and gloat over it as an 
inestimable gem, a diamond, a treasure far prefer- 
able to those bright, spiritual revelations of a 
better world, which are like precious stones from 



MOSSES FROM AA OLD MANSE. 



S9 



heaven's pavement. And then, amid his lore of 
wretchedness he hid his face and wept. 

It was a festival at which the woful man of Uz 
might suitably have been a guest, together with 
all, in each succeeding age, who have tasted 
deepest of the bitterness of life. And be it said, 
too, that every son or daughter of women, how- 
ever favored with happy fortune, might, at one 
sad moment or another, have claimed the privilege 
of a stricken heart, to sit down at this table. 
But, throughout the feast, it was remarked that 
the young stranger, Gervayse Hastings, was un- 
successful in his attempts to catch its pervading 
spirit. At any deep, strong thought that found 
utterance, and which was torn out, as it w^re, 
from the saddest recesses of human conscious- 
ness, he looked mystified and bewildered ; even 
more than the poor idiot, who seemed to grasp 
at such things with his earnest heart, and thus 
occasionally to comprehend them. The young 
man's conversation was of a colder and lighter 
kind, often brilliant, but lacking the powerful 
characteristics of a nature that had been de- 
veloped by suffering. 

" Sir," said the misanthropist, bluntly, in reply 
to some observation by Gervayse Hastings, " pray 
do not address me again. We have no right to 
talk together. Our minds have nothing in com- 
mon. By what claim you appear at this banquet 
I cannot guess ; but methinks, to a man who 
could say what you have just now said, my com- 
panions and myself must seem no more than 
shadows flickering on the wall. And precisely 
such a shadow arr you to us." 



Co MOSSES FROM A A' OLD MANSE. 

The young man smiled and bowed, but, draw- 
ing himself back in his chair, he buttoned his 
coat over his breast, as if the banqueting-hall 
were growing chill. Again the idiot fixed his 
melancholy stare upon the youth, and murmured, 
" Cold ! cold 1 cold ! " 

The banquet drew to its conclusion, and the 
guests departed. Scarcely had they stepped 
across the threshold of the hall, when the scene 
that had there passed seemed like the vision of 
a sick fancy, or an exhalation from a stagnant 
heart. Now and then, however, during the year 
that ensued, these melancholy people caught 
glimpses of one another, transient, indeed, but 
enough to prove that they walked the earth with 
the ordinary allotment of reality. Sometimes a 
pair of them came face to face, while stealing 
through the evening twilight, enveloped in their 
sable cloaks. Sometimes they casually met in 
churchyards. Once, also, it happened that twa 
of the dismal banqueters mutually started at rec- 
ognizing each other in the noonday sunshine of 
a crowded street, stalking there like ghosts astray. 
Doubtless they wondered why the skeleton did 
not come abroad at noonday too. 

But whenever the necessity of their affairs 
compelled these Christmas guests into the bus- 
tling world, they were sure to encounter the young 
man who had so unaccountably been admitted to 
the festival. They saw him among the gay and 
fortunate ; they caught the sunny sparkle of his 
eye ; they heard the light and careless tones of 
his voice, and muttered to themselves with such 



MOSSES FROM AN' OLD MANSE. 6 1 

indignation as only the aristocracy of wretched* 
ness could kindle, " The traitor ! The vile im- 
postor ! Providence, in its own good time, may 
give him a right to feast among us ! ^' But the 
young man's unabashed eye dwelt upon their 
gloomy figures as they passed him, seeming to 
say, perchance with somewhat of a sneer, " First, 
know my secret! — then, measure your claims 
with mine ! '* 

The step of Time stole onward, and soon 
brought merry Christmas round again, with glad 
and solemn worship in the churches, and sports^ 
games, festivals, and everywhere the bright face 
of Joy beside the household fire. Again likewise 
the hall, with its curtains of dusky purple, was 
illuminated by the death-torches gleaming on the 
sepulchral decorations of the banquet. The 
veiled skeleton sat in state, lifting the cypress- 
wreath above its head, as the guerdon of some 
guest illustrious in the qualifications which there 
claimed precedence. As the stewards deemed 
the world inexhaustible in misery, and were de- 
sirous of recognizing it in all its forms, they had 
not seen fit to reassemble the company of the 
former year. New faces now threw their gloom 
across the table. 

There was a man of nice conscience, who bore 
a blood-stain in his heart — the death of a fellow- 
creature — which, for his more exquisite torture, 
had chanced with such a peculiarity of circum- 
stances, that he could not absolutely determine 
whether his will had entered into the deed or 
not. Therefore, his whole life w^as spent in the 



62 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

agony of an inward trial for murder, with a con* 
tinual sifting of the details of his terrible calami 
ity, until his mind had no longer any thought, 
nor his soul any em.otion, disconnected with it. 
There was a mother, too, — a mother once, but a 
desolation now, — who, many years before, had 
gone out on a pleasure-party, and, returning, 
found her infant smothered in its little bed. And 
ever since she had been tortured with the fantasy 
that her buried baby lay smothering in its coffin* 
Then there was an aged lady, who had lived 
from time immemorial with a constant tremor 
quivering througly her frame. It was terrible to 
discern her dark shadow tremulous upon the 
wall; her lips, likewise, were tremulous; and 
the expression of her eye seemed to indicate that 
her soul was trembling too. Owing to the be- 
wilderment and confusion which made almost a 
chaos of her intellect, it was impossible to dis- 
cover what dire misfortune had thus shaken her 
nature to its depths ; so that the stewards had 
admitted her to the table, not from any acquaint- 
ance with her history, but on the safe testimony 
of her miserable aspect. Some surprise was ex- 
pressed at the presence of a bluff, red-faced 
gentleman, a certain Mr. Smith, who had evi- 
dently the fat of many a rich feast within him, 
and the habitual twinkle of whose eye betrayed a 
disposition to break forth into uproarious laughter 
•for little cause or none. It turned out, however, 
that, with the best possible flow of spirits, our 
poor friend was afflicted with a physical disease 
of the heart, which threatened instant death on. 



MOSSES FROM AlV OLD MANSE. 63 

the slightest cachinnatory indulgence, or even 
that titillation of the bodily frame produced by 
merry thoughts. In this dilemma he had sought 
admittance to the banquet, on the ostensible 
plea of his irksome and miserable state, but, in 
reality with the hope of imbibing a life-preserv- 
ing melancholy. 

A married couple had been invited from a mo- 
tive of bitter humor, it being well understood 
that they rendered each other utterably miser- 
able whenever they chanced to meet, and there- 
fore must necessarily be fit associates at the festi- 
val. In contrast with these was another couple still 
unmarried, who had interchanged their hearts in 
early life, but had been divided by circumstances 
as impalpable as morning mist, and kept apart so 
long that their spirits now found it impossible to 
meet. Therefore, yearning for communion, yet 
shrinking from one another and choosing none 
beside, they felt themselves companionless in 
life, and looked upon eternity as a boundless 
desert. Next to the skeleton sat a mere son of 
earth, a hunter of the Exchange, — a gatherer of 
shining dust, — a man whose life's record was in 
his ledger, and whose soul's prison-house the 
vaults of the bank where he kept his deposits. 
This person had been greatly perplexed at his in- 
vitation, deeming himself one of the most fortu- 
nate men in the city ; but the stewards persisted 
in demanding his presence, assuring him that he 
had no conception how miserable he was. 

And now appeared a figure which we must ac- 
knowledge as our acquaintance of the former fes- 



64 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

tival. It was Gervayse Hastings, whose presence 
had then caused so much question and criticism, 
and who now took his place with the composure 
of one whose claims were satisfactory to himself 
and must needs be allowed by others. Yet his 
easy and unruffled face betrayed no sorrow. 
The well-skilled beholders gazed a moment into 
his eyes and shook their heads, to miss the un- 
uttered sympathy — the countersign never to be 
falsified — of those whose hearts are cavern- 
mouths through which they descend into a region 
of illimitable woe and recognize other wanderers 
there. 

'^ Who is this youth ? " asked the man with a 
blood-stain on his conscience. *' Surely he has 
never gone down into the depths ! I know all 
the aspects of those who have passed through the 
dark valley. By what right is he among us 1 '' 

" Ah, it is a sinful thing to come hither with- 
out a sorrow," murmured the aged lady, in ac- 
cents that partook of the eternal tremor which 
pervaded her whole being " Depart, young man ! 
Your soul has never been shaken, and, therefore, 
I tremble so much the more to look at you.'' 

" His soul shaken ! No ; I'll answer for it/* 
said bluff Mr. Smith, pressing his hand upon his 
heart and making himself as melancholy as he 
could, for fear of a fatal explosion of laughter. 
*' I know the lad well ; he has as fair prospects 
as any young man about town, and has no more 
right among us miserable creatures than the child 
unborn. He never was miserable and probably 
never will be ! " 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 65 

" Our honored guests," interposed the stew- 
ards, "pray have patience with us, and believe, 
at least, that our deep veneration for the sacred- 
ness of this solemnity would preclude any wilful 
violation of it. Receive this young man to your 
table. It may not be too much to say, that no 
guest here would exchange his own heart for the 
one that beats within that youthful bosom ! " 

"I'd call it a bargain, and gladly too," muttered 
Mr. Smith, with a perplexing mixture of sadness 
and mirthful conceit. " A plague upon their 
nonsense ! My own heart is the only really mis- 
erable one in the company ; it will certainly be 
the death of me at last ! " 

Nevertheless, as on the former occasion, the 
judgment of the stewards being without appeal, 
the company sat down. The obnoxious guest 
made no more attempt to obtrude his conversa- 
tion on those about him, but appeared to listen 
to the table-talk with peculiar assiduity, as if 
some inestimable secret, otherwise beyond his 
reach, might be conveyed in a casual word. And 
in truth, to those who could understand and 
value it, there was rich matter in the upgushings 
and outpourings of these initiated souls to whom 
sorrow had been a talisman, admitting them into 
spiritual depths which no other spell can open. 
Sometimes out of the midst of densest gloom 
there flashed a momentary radiance, pure as 
crystal, bright as the flame of stars, and shed- 
ding such a glow upon the mysteries of life, that 
the guests were ready to exclaim, " Surely the 
riddle is on the point of being solved ! " At such 
5 



66 MOSSES FROM AN' OLD MANSE, 

illuminated intervals the saddest mourners felt it 
to be revealed that mortal griefs are but shadowy 
and external ; no more than the sable robes vol- 
uminously shrouding a certain divine reality, and 
thus indicating what might otherwise be altogether 
invisible to mortal eye. 

"Just now," remarked the trembling old 
woman, " I seemed to see beyond the outside. 
And then my everlasting tremor passed away ! " 

" Would that I could dwell always in these 
momentary gleams of light ! " said the man of 
stricken conscience. "Then the blood-stain in 
my heart would be washed clean away." 

This strain of conversation appeared so unin- 
telligibly absurd to good Mr. Smith, that he burst 
into precisely the fit of laughter which his phy- 
sicians had warned him against, as likely to prove 
instantaneously fatal. In effect, he fell back in 
his chair a corpse, with a broad grin upon his 
face, while his ghost, perchance, remained beside 
it bewildered at its unpremeditated exit. This 
catastrophe of course broke up the festival. 

" How is this } You do not tremble ! " ob- 
served the tremulous old woman to Gervayse 
Hastings, who was gazing at the dead man with 
singular intentness. " Is it not awful to see him 
so suddenly vanish out of the midst of life, — this 
man of flesh and blood, whose earthly nature was 
so warm and strong ? There is a never-ending 
tremor in my soul, but it trembles afresh at this ! 
And you are calm ! " 

" Would that he could teach me somewhat ! " 
said Gervayse Hastings, drawing a long breath. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 67 

*^ Men pass before me like shadows on the wall ; 
their actions, passions, feelings, are flickerings 
of the light, and then they vanish ! Neither the 
corpse, nor yonder skeleton, nor this old woman's 
everlasting tremor, can give me what I seek." 

And then the company departed. 

We cannot linger to narrate, in such detail, 
more circumstances of these singular festivals^ 
which, in accordance with the founder's will, 
continued to be kept with the regularity of an 
established institution. In process of time the 
stewards adopted the custom of inviting, from far 
and near, those individuals whose misfortunes 
were prominent above other men's, and whose 
mental and moral development might, therefore, 
be supposed to possess a corresponding interest. 
The exiled noble of the French Revolution, and 
the broken soldier of the Empire, were alike rep- 
resented at the table. Fallen monarchs, wan- 
dering about the earth, have found places at 
that forlorn and miserable feast. The statesman, 
when his party flung him off, might, if he chose 
it, be once more a great man for the space of 
a single banquet. Aaron Burr's name appears 
on the record at a period when his ruin — the pro- 
foundest and most striking, with more of moral 
circumstance in it than that of almost any other 
man — was complete in his lonely age. Stephen 
Girard, when his wealth weighed upon him like a 
mountain, once sought admittance of his own 
accord. It is not probable, however, that these 
men had any lesson to teach in the lore of dis- 
content and misery which might not equally well 



6S MOSSES FROM AiV OLD MANSE. 

have been studied in tlie common walks of life. 
Illustrious unfortunates attract a wider sympathy, 
not because their griefs are more intense, but be- 
cause, being set on lofty pedestals, they the bet- 
ter serve mankind as instances and bywords of 
calamity. 

It concerns our present purpose to say that, 
at each successive festival, Gervayse Hastings 
showed his face, gradually changing from the 
smooth beauty of his youth to the thoughtful 
comeliness of manhood, and thence to the bald, 
impressive dignity of age. He w^as the only 
individual invariably present. Yet on ' every 
occasion there were murmurs, both from those 
who knew his character and position, and from 
them whose hearts shrank back as denying his 
companionship in their mystic fraternity. 

" Who is this impassive man ? " had been asked 
a hundred times. ''Has he suffered.^ Has he 
sinned ? There are no traces of either. Then 
wherefore is he here t '' 

" You must inquire of the stewards or of him- 
self," was the constant reply. '' We seem to 
know^ hirn well here in our city, and know noth- 
ing of him but what is creditable and fortunate. 
Yet hither he comes, year after year, to this 
gloomy banquet, and sits among the guests like a- 
marble statue. Ask yonder skeleton, perhaps 
that may solve the riddle ! " 

It was in truth a wonder. The life of Gervayse 
Hastings was not merely a prosperous, but a 
..brilliant one. Everything had gone well with 
him. He was w^ealthy, far beyond the expendi- 



MOSSES FROM AiV OLD MANSE, 69 

ture that' was required by habits of magnificence, 
a taste of rare purity and cultivation, a love of 
travel, a scholar's instinct to collect a splendid 
library, and, moreover, what seemed a magnificent 
liberality to the distressed. He had sought hap- 
piness, and not vainly, if a lovely and tender 
wife, and children of fair promise, could insure it. 
He had, besides, ascended above the limit which 
separates the obscure from the distinguished, and 
had won a stainless reputation in affairs of the 
widest public importance. Not that he was a 
popular character, or had within him the mysteri- 
ous attributes which are essential to that species 
of success. To the public he was a cold abstrac- 
tion, wholly destitute of those rich hues of per- 
sonality, that living warmth, and the peculiar 
faculty of stamping his own heart's impression 
on a multitude of hearts, by which the people rec- 
ognize their favorites. And it must be owned 
that, after his most intimate associates had done 
their best to know him thoroughly, and love him 
warmly, they were startled to find how little hold 
he had upon their affections. They approved, 
they admired, but still in those moments when 
the human spirit most craves reality, they shrank 
back from Gervayse Hastings, as powerless to 
give them what they sought. It was the feeling 
of distrustful regret with which we should draw 
back the hand after extending it, in an illusive 
twilight, to grasp the hand of a shadow upon the 
wall. * 

As the superficial fervency of youth decayed^ 
this peculiar effect of Gervayse Hastings's char- 



70 MOSSES FROM A AT OLD MANSE, 

acter grew more perceptible. His children, when 
he extended his arms, came coldly to his knees, 
but never climbed them of their own accord. 
His wife wept secretly, and almost adjudged her- 
self a criminal because she shivered in the chill 
of his bosom. He, too, occasionally appeared 
not unconscious of the chillness of his moral 
atmosphere, and willing, if it might be so, to 
warm himself at a kindly fire. But age stole on- 
ward and benumbed him more and more. As 
the hoar-frost began to gather on him his wife 
went to her grave, and was doubtless warmer 
there : his children either died or were scattered 
to different homes of their own ; and old Gervayse 
Hastings, unscathed by grief, — alone, but need- 
ing no companionship — continued his steady walk 
through life, and still on every Christmas day at- 
tended at the dismal banquet. His privilege as 
a guest had become prescriptive now. Had he 
claimed the head of the table, even the skeleton 
would have been ejected from its seat. 

Finally, at the merry Christmas-tide, when he 
had numbered fourscore years complete, this 
pale, high-browed, marble-featured old man once 
more entered the long frequented hall, with the 
same impassive aspect that had called forth so 
much dissatisfied remark at his first attendance. 
Time, except in matters merely external, had 
done nothing for him, either of good or evil. As 
he took his place he threw a calm, inquiring 
glance arounti the table, as if to ascertain whether 
any guest had yet appeared, after so many un- 
successful banquets, who might impart to him the 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 71 

mystery — the deep, warm secret — the life within 
the Ufe — which, whether manifested in joy or 
sorrow, is what gives substance to a world of 
shadows. 

" My friends," said Gervayse Hastings, assum- 
ing a position which his long conversance with 
the festival caused to appear natural, " you are 
welcome ! I drink to you all in this cup of 
sepulchral wine." 

The guests replied courteously, but still in a 
manner that proved them unable to receive the 
old man as a member of their sad fraternity. It 
may be well to give the reader an idea of the 
present company at the banquet. 

One was formerly a clergyman, enthusiastic in 
his profession, and apparently of the genuine 
dynasty of those old Puritan divines whose faith 
in their calling, and stern exercise of it, had 
placed them among the mighty of the earth. But 
yielding to the speculative tendency of the age, 
he had gone astray from the firm foundation of 
an ancient faith, and wandered into a cloud- 
region, where everything was misty and deceptive, 
ever mocking him with a semblance of reality, 
but still dissolving when he flung himself upon it 
for support and rest. His instinct and early 
training demanded something steadfast ; but, 
looking forward, he beheld vapors piled on 
vapors, and behind him an impassable gulf be- 
tween the man of yesterday and to-day, on the 
borders of which he paced to and fro, sometimes 
wringing his hands in agony, and often making 
his own woe a theme of scornful merriment 



72 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

This surely was a miserable man. Next, there 
was a theorist, one of a numerous tribe, 
although he deemed himself unique since the 
creation, — a theorist, who had conceived a plan 
by which all the wretchedness of earth, moral 
and physical, might be dojie away, and the bliss 
of the millennium at once accomplished. But, 
the incredulity of mankind debarring him from 
action, he was smitten with as much grief as if 
the whole mass of woe which he was denied the 
opportunity to remedy were crowded into his own 
bosom. A plain old man in black attracted much 
of the company's notice, on the supposition that 
he was no other than Father Miller, who, it 
seemed, had given himself up to despair at the 
tedious delay of the final conflagration. Then 
there was a man distinguished for native pride 
and obstinacy, who, a little while before, had 
possessed immense wealth, and held the control 
of a vast moneyed interest which he had wielded 
in the same spirit as a despotic monarch would 
wield the power of his empire, carrying on a tre- 
mendous moral warfare, the roar and tremor of 
which was felt at every fireside in the land. At 
length came a crushing ruin, — a total overthrow 
of fortune, power, and character, — the effect of 
which on his imperious and, in many respects, 
noble and lofty nature might have entitled him 
to a place, not merely at our festival, but among 
the peers of Pandemonium. 

There was a modern philanthropist, who had 
become so deeply sensible of the calamities of 
thousands and millions of his fellow-creatures, 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 73 

and of the impracticableness of any general meas- 
ures for their relief, that he had no heart to do 
what little good lay immediately within his power, 
but contented himself wdth being miserable for 
sympathy. Near him sat a gentleman in a pre- 
dicament hitherto unprecedented, but of which 
the present epoch probably affords numerous ex- 
amples. Ever since he was of capacity to read a 
newspaper, this person had prided himself on his 
consistent adherence to one political party, but, 
in the confusion of these latter days, had got be- 
wildered and knew not w^iereabouts his party 
was. This wretched condition, so morally deso- 
late and disheartening to a man who has long 
accustomed himself to merge his individuality in 
the mass of a great body, can only be conceived 
by such as have experienced it. His next com- 
panion was a popular orator who had lost his 
voice, and — as it was pretty much all that he had 
to lose — had fallen into a state of hopeless mel- 
ancholy. The table was likewise graced by two 
of the gentler sex, — one, a half-starved, consump- 
tive seamstress, the representative of thousands 
just as wretched ; the other, a woman of unem- 
ployed energy, who found herself in the world 
with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and 
nothing even to suffer. She had, therefore, 
driven herself to the verge of madness by dark 
broodings over the wrongs of her sex, and its ex- 
clusion from a proper field of action. The rolf 
of guests being thus complete, a side-table had 
been set for three or four disappointed office- 
seekers, with hearts as sick as death, whom the 



74 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

Stewards had admitted partly because their ca- 
lamities really entitled them to entrance here, and 
partly that they were in especial need of a good 
dinner. There was likewise a homeless dog, 
with his tail between his legs, licking up the 
crumbs and gnawing the fragments of the feast, 
— such a melancholy cur as one sometimes sees 
about the streets without a master, and willing to 
follow the first that will accept his service. 

In their own way, these were as wretched a set 
of people as ever had assembled at the festival. 
There they sat, with the veiled skeleton of the 
founder holding aloft the cypress-wreath, at one 
end of the table, and at the other, wrapped in 
furs, the withered figure of Gervayse Hastings, 
stately, calm, and cold, impressing the company 
with awe, yet so little interesting their sympathy 
that he might have vanished into thin air without 
their once exclaiming, " Whither is he gone ? '' 

" Sir," said the philanthropist, addressing the 
old man, " you have been so long a guest at this 
annual festival, and have thus been conversant 
with so many varieties of human affliction, that, 
not improbably, you have thence derived some 
great and important lessons. How blessed were 
your lot could you reveal a secret by which all 
this mass of woe might be removed ! " 

" I know of but one misfortune," answered 
Gervayse Hastings, quietly, " and that is my own." 

" Your own ! " rejoined the philanthropist, 
" And looking back on your serene and prosper- 
ous life, how can you claim to be the sole unfor* 
tunate of the human race ? " 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 75 

"You will not understand it," replied Gervayse 
Hastings, feebly, and with a singular inefficiency 
of pronunciation, and sometimes putting one word 
for another. " None have understood it, not even 
those who experience the like. It is a chilliness, 
a want of earnestness, a feeling as if what should 
be my heart were a thing of vapor, a haunting 
perception of unreality ! Thus seeming to possess 
all that other men have, all that men aim at, I 
have really possessed nothing, neither joy nor 
griefs. All things, all persons, — as was truly said 
to me at this table long and long ago, — have 
been like shadows flickering on the wall. It was 
so with my wife and children, with those wdio 
seemed my friends : it is so with yourselves, 
whom I see now before me. Neither have I my- 
self any real existence, but am a shadow like the 
rest." 

" And how is it with your views of a future 
life ? " inquired the speculative clergyman. 

" Worse than with you," said the old man, in a 
hollow and feeble tone ; " for I cannot conceive 
it earnestly enough to feel either hope or fear. 
Mine, — mine is the wretchedness ! This cold 
heart, — this unreal life ! Ah ! it growls colder 
still." 

It so chanced that at this juncture the decayed 
ligaments of the skeleton gave way, and the dry 
bones fell together in a heap, thus causing the 
dusty wreath of cypress to drop upon the table. 
The attention of the company being thus diverted 
for a single instant from Gervayse Hastings, they 
perceived, on turning again towards him, that the 



76 MOSSES FROM AN OLD M4NSE, 

old man had undergone a change. His shadow 
had ceased to flicker on the wall. 

'* Well, Rosina, what is your criticism ? " asked 
Roderick, as he rolled up the manuscript. 

" Frankly, your success is by no means com- 
plete," replied she. ^' It is true, I have an idea 
of the character you endeavor to describe ; but 
it is rather by dint of my own thought than your 
expression." 

" That is unavoidable," observed the sculptor, 
"because the characteristics are all negative. If 
Gervayse Hastings could have imbibed one 
human grief at the gloomy banquet, the task of 
describing him would have been infinitely easier. 
Of such persons — and we do meet with these 
moral monsters now and then — it is difficult to 
conceive how they came to exist here, or what 
there is in them capable of existence hereafter. 
They seem to be on the outside of everything; 
and nothing wearies the soul more than an at- 
tempt to comprehend them within its grasp." 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. jj 



DROWNE'S WOODEN IMAGE. 

One sunshiny morning, in the good old times 
of the town of Boston, a young carver in wood, 
well known by the name of Drowne, stood con- 
templating a large oaken log, which it w^as his 
purpose to convert into the figure-head of a 
vessel. And while he discussed within his own 
mind what sort of shape or similitude it were 
well to bestow upon this excellent piece of timber, 
there came into Drowne's workshop a certain 
Captain Hunnewell, owner and commander of 
the good brig called the Cynosure, which had 
just returned from her first voyage to Fayal. 

" Ah ! that will do, Drowne, that will do ! " 
cried the jolly captain, tapping the log with his 
ratan. " I bespeak this very piece of oak for the 
figure-head of the Cynosure. She has shown 
herself the sweetest craft that ever floated, and I 
mean to decorate her prow^ with the handsomest 
image that the skill of man can cut out of timber. 
And, Drowne, you are the fellow to execute 
it." 

" You give me more credit than I deserve, 
Captain Hunnewell," said the carver, modestly, 
yet as one conscious of eminence in his art. 
*'But, for the sake of the good brig, I stand 



78 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

ready to do my best. And which of these designs 
do you prefer ? Here," — pointing to a staring^ 
half-length figure, in a white wig and scarlet coat^ 
— " here is an excellent model, the likeness of 
our gracious king. Here is the valiant Admiral 
Vernon. Or, if you prefer a female figure, what 
say you to Britannia with the trident ? " 

" All very fine, Drowne ; all very fine," an- 
swered the mariner. " But as nothing like the 
brig ever swam the ocean, so I am determined 
she shall have such a figure-head as old Neptune 
never saw in his life. And what is more, as 
there is a secret in the matter, you must pledge 
your credit not to betray it." 

" Certainly," said Drowne, marvelling, how- 
ever,, what possible mystery there could be in 
reference to an affair so open, of necessity, to the 
inspection of all the world as the figure-head of 
a vessel. "You may depend, Captain, on my 
being as secret as the nature of the case w^ill 
permit." 

Captain Hunnewell then took Drowne by the 
button, and communicated his wishes in so low 
a tone that it would be unmannerly to repeat 
what was evidently intended for the carver's 
private ear. We shall, therefore, take the op- 
portunity to give the reader a few desirable par- 
ticulars about Drowne himself. 

He was the first American who is known to 
have attempted — in a very humble line, it is true 
— that art in which we can now reckon so many 
names already distinguished, or rising to distinc- 
tion. From his earliest boyhood he had exhibited 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 79 

a knack, — for it would be too proud a word to call 
it genius, — a knack, therefore, for the imitation 
of the human figure in whatever material came 
most readily to hand. The snows of a New 
England winter had often supplied him with a 
species of marble as dazzlingly white, at least, 
as the Parian or the Carrara, and if less durable, 
yet sufficiently so to correspond with any claims 
to permanent existence possessed by the boy's 
frozen statues. Yet they won admiration from 
maturer judges than his schoolfellows, and were, 
indeed, remarkably clever, though destitute of the 
native warmth that might have made the snow 
melt beneath his hand. As he advanced in life,, 
the young man adopted pine and oak as eligible 
materials for the display of his skill, which now 
began to bring him a return of solid silver as well 
as the empty praise that had been an apt reward 
enough for his productions of evanescent snow. 
He became noted for carving ornamental pump- 
heads, and wooden urns for gate-posts, and 
decorations, more grotesque than fanciful, for 
mantelpieces. No apothecary would have 
deemed himself in the way of obtaining custom, 
without setting up a gilded mortar, if not a head 
of Galen or Hippocrates, from the skilful hand 
of Drowne. 

But the great scope of his business lay in 
the manufacture of figure-heads for vessels. 
Whether it were the monarch himself, or some 
famous British admiral or general, or the gov- 
ernor of the province, or perchance the favorite 
daughter of the ship-owner, there the image 



So MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

stood above the prow, decked out in gorgeous 
colors, magnificently gilded, and staring the 
whole world out of countenance, as if from an in- 
nate consciousness of its own superiority. These 
specimens of native sculpture had crossed the 
sea in all directions, and been not ignobly noticed 
among the crowded shipping of the Thames, and 
wherever else the hardy mariners of New Eng- 
land had pushed their adventures. It must be 
confessed that a family likeness pervaded these 
respectable progeny of Browne's skill ; that the 
benign countenance of the king resembled those 
of his subjects, and that Miss Peggy Hobart, the 
merchant's daughter, bore a remarkable simili- 
tude to Britannia, Victory, and other ladies of 
the allegoric sisterhood ; and, finally, that they 
all had a kind of wooden aspect, which proved 
an intimate relationship with the unshaped blocks 
of timber in the carver's workshop. But at least 
there was no inconsiderable skill of hand, nor a 
deficiency of any attribute to render them really 
works of art, except that deep quality, be it of 
soul or intellect, which bestows life upon the 
lifeless and warmth upon the cold, and which, 
had it been present, would have made Browne's 
wooden image instinct with spirit. 

The captain of the Cynosure had now finished 
his instructions. 

" And, Browne," said he, impressively, ^' you 
must lay aside all other business and set about 
this forthwith. And as to the price, only do the 
job in first-rate style, and you shall settle that 
point yourself/' 



MOSSES FROM A A' OLD MANSE. 8 1 

"Very well, Captain/' answered the carver, 
who looked grave and somewhat perplexed, yet 
had a sort of smile upon his visage ; " depend 
upon it, I'll do my utmost to satisfy you." 

From that moment the men of taste about 
Long Wharf and the Town Dock who were wont 
to show their love for the arts by frequent visits 
to Browne's workshop, and admiration of his 
wooden images, began to be sensible of a mystery 
in the carver's conduct. Often he was absent 
in the daytime. Sometimes, as might be judged 
by gleams of light from the shop-windows, he w^as 
at work until a late hour of the evening ; although 
neither knock nor voice, on such occasions, could 
gain admittance for a visitor, or eUcit any word 
of response. Nothing remarkable, however, was 
observed in the shop at those hours when it was 
thrown open. A fine piece of timber indeed, 
which Drowne was known to have reserved for 
some work of especial dignity, was seen to be 
gradually assuming shape. What shape it was 
destined ultimately to take was a problem to his 
friends and a point on which the carver himself 
preserved a rigid silence. But day after day, 
though Drowne was seldom noticed in the act of 
working upon it, this rude form began to be de- 
veloped until it became evident to all observers 
that a female figure was growing into mimic life. 
At each new visit they beheld a larger pile of 
wooden chips and a nearer approximation to 
something beautiful. It seemed as if the ham- 
adryad of the oak had sheltered herself from the 
unimaginative world within the heart of her na-^ 
6 



82 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

tive tree, and that it was only necessary to re- 
move the strange shapelessness that had incrusted 
her, and reveal the grace and loveliness of a divin- 
ity. Imperfect as the design, the attitude, the 
costume, and especially the face of the image still 
remained, there was already an effect that drew the 
eye from the wooden cleverness of Browne's earlier 
productions and fixed it upon the tantalizing mys- 
tery of this new project. 

Copley, the celebrated painter, then a young 
man and a resident of Boston, came one day to 
visit Drowne ; for he had recognized so much of 
moderate ability in the carver as to induce him, 
in the dearth of professional sympathy, to cultivate 
his acquaintance. On entering the shop the artist 
glanced at the inflexible image of king, com- 
mander, dame, and allegory that stood around, 
on the best of which might have been bestowed 
the questionable praise that it looked as if a liv- 
ing man had here been changed to wood, and 
that not only the physical, but the intellectual 
and spiritual part, partook of the stolid transfor- 
mation. But in not a single instance did it seem 
as if the wood were imbibing the ethereal essence 
of humanity. What a wide distinction is here ! 
and how far would the slightest portion of the 
latter merit have outvalued the utmost degree of 
the former ! 

*^ My friend Drowne,'' said Copley, smiling to 
himself, but alluding to the mechanical and 
wooden cleverness that so invariably distin- 
guished the images, *' you are really a remarkable 
person ! I have seldom met with a man in your 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. Z^i 

line of business that could do so much ; for one 
other touch might make this figure of General 
Wolfe, for instance, a breathing and intelligent 
human creature." 

" You would have me think that you are prais- 
ing me highly, Mr. Copley,'' answered Drowne, 
turning his back upon Wolfe's image in apparent 
disgust. ^' But there has come a light into my 
mind. I know, what you know as well, that the 
one touch which ypu speak of as deficient is the 
only one that would be truly valuable, and that 
without it these works of mine are no better than 
worthless abortions. There is the same differ- 
ence between them and the works of an inspired 
artist as between a sign-post daub and one of 
your best pictures." 

" This is strange," cried Copley, looking him 
in the face, which now, as the painter fancied, 
had a singular depth of intelligence, though hither- 
to it had not given him greatly the advantage 
over •his own family of wooden images. *' What 
has come over you .? How is it that, possessing 
the idea which you have now uttered, you should 
produce only such works as these ? " 

The carver smiled, but made no reply. Copley 
turned again to the images, conceiving that the 
sense of deficiency which Drowne had just ex- 
pressed, and which is so rare in a merely mechan- 
ical character, must surely imply a genius, the 
tokens of which had heretofore been overlooked. 
But no ; there was not a trace of it. He was 
about to withdraw when his eyes chanced to fall 
upon a half-developed figure which lay in a corner 



84 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

of the workshop, surrounded by scattered chipi 
of oak. It arrested him at once. 

" What is here } Who has done this ? '' he 
broke out, after contemplating it in speechless 
astonishment for an instant. " Here is the 
divine, the life-giving touch. W^hat inspired hand 
is beckoning this wood to rise and live 1 Whose 
work is this 1 '' 

'' No man's work," replied Drowne. ^' The 
figure lies within that block of oak, and it is my 
business to find it." 

*' Drowne," said the true artist, grasping the 
carver fervently by the hand, " you are a man of 
genius ! " 

As Copley departed, happening to glance back- 
ward from the threshold, he beheld Drowne bend- 
ing over the half-created shape, and stretching 
forth his arms as if he would have embraced and 
drawn it to his heart; while, had such a miracle 
been possible, his countenance expressed passion 
enough to communicate warmth and sensibility 
to the lifeless oak. 

" Strange enough ! " said the artist to himself. 
"W^ho would have looked for a modern Pygma- 
lion in the person of a Yankee mechanic ! " 

As yet, the image v/as but vague in its out- 
ward presentment; so that, as in the cloud- 
shapes around the western sun, the observer 
rather felt, or was led to imagine, than really saw 
what was intended by it. Day by day, however, 
the work assumed greater precision, and settled 
its irregular and misty outline into distincter 
grace and beauty. The general design was now 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 85 

obvious to the common eye. It was a female 
figure, in what appeared to be a foreign dress ; 
the gown being laced over the bosom, and open- 
ing in front so as to disclose a skirt or petticoat, 
the folds and inequalities of which were admirably 
represented in the oaken substance. She wore 
a hat of singular gracefulness, and abundantly 
laden with flowers, such as never grew in the rude 
soil of New England, but which, with all their 
fanciful luxuriance, had a natural truth that it 
seemed impossible for the most fertile imagina- 
tion to have attained without copying from real 
prototypes. There were several little append- 
ages to this dress, such as a fan, a pair of ear- 
rings, a chain about the neck, a watch in the 
bosom, and a ring upon the finger, all of which 
would have been deemed beneath the dignity of 
sculpture. They were put on, however, with as 
much taste as a lovely woman might have shown 
in her attire, and could therefore have shocked 
none but a judgment spoiled by artistic rules. 

The face was still imperfect ; but gradually, 
by a magic touch, intelligence and sensibility 
brightened through the features, with all the effect 
of light gleaming forth from within the solid oak. 
The face became alive. It was a beautiful, 
though not precisely regular, and somewhat 
haughty aspect, but with a certain piquancy abouc 
the eyes and mouth, which, of all expressions, 
would have seemed the most impossible to throw 
over a wooden countenance. And now, so far 
as carving went, this wonderful production was 
complete. 



86 MOSSES FROM AJV OLD MANSE, 

'-'' Drowne/' said Copley, who had hardly missed 
a single day in his visits to the carver's work- 
shop, " if this work were in marble it would make 
you famous at once; nay, I would almost affirm 
that it would make an era in the art. It is as 
ideal as an antique statue, and yet as real as any 
lovely woman whom one meets at a fireside or in 
the street. But I trust you do not mean to 
desecrate this exquisite creature with paint, like 
those staring kings and admirals yonder ? '' 

" Not paint her ? '^ exclaimed Captain Hunne- 
well, who stood by ; " not paint the figure-head 
of the Cynosure ! And what sort of a figure 
should I cut in a foreign port with such an 
unpainted oaken stick as this over my prow ! 
She must, and she shall, be painted to the Hfe, 
from the topmost flower in her hat down to the 
silver spangles on her slippers. '* 

"Mr. Copley,'' said Drowne, quietly, ^^I know 
nothing of marble statuary, and nothing of the 
sculptor's rules of art ; but of this wooden image, 
this work of my hands, this creature of my heart," 
— and here his voice faltered and choked in a 
very singular manner, — " of this — of her — I may 
say that I know something. A wellspring of in- 
ward wisdom gushed within me as I wrought 
upon the oak with my whole strength, and soul, 
and faith. Let others do what they may with 
marble, and adopt what rules they choose. If I 
can produce my desired effect by painted wood, 
those rules are not for me, and I have a right to 
disregard them." 

" The very spirit of genius," muttered Copley 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 87 

to himself. " How otherwise should this carver 
feel himself entitled to transcend all rules, and 
make me ashamed of quoting them ? '^ 

He looked earnestly at Drowne, and again saw 
that expression of human love which, in a spirit- 
ual sense, as the artist could not help imagining, 
was the secret of the life that had been breathed 
into this block of wood. 

The carver, still in the same secrecy that 
marked all his operations upon this mysterious 
image, proceeded to paint the habiliments in their 
proper colors, and the countenance with nature's 
red and white. When all was finished he threw 
open his workshop, and admitted the towns- 
people to behold \vhat he had done. Most 
persons, at their first entrance, felt impelled to 
remove their hats, and pay such reverence as 
was due to the richly dressed and beautiful young 
lady who seemed to stand in a corner of the 
room, with oaken 'chips and shavings scattered at 
her feet. Then came a sensation of fear ; as if, 
not being actually human, yet so like humanity, 
she must therefore be something preternatural. 
There was, in truth, an indefinable air and ex- 
pression that might reasonably induce the query. 
Who and from what sphere this daughter of the 
oak should be? The strange, rich flowers of 
Eden on her head ; the complexion, so much 
deeper and more brilliant than those of our 
native beauties ; the foreign, as it seemed, and 
fantastic garb, yet not too fantastic to be worn 
decorously in the street ; the delicately wrought 
embroidery of the skirt ; the broad gold chain 



88 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

about her neck ; the curious ring upon her finger; 
the fan, so exquisitely sculptured in open-work, 
and painted to resemble pearl and ebony ;— 
where could Drowne, in his sober walk of life, 
have beheld the vision here so matchlessly em- 
bodied ! And then her face ! In the dark eyes 
and around the voluptuous mouth there played a 
look made up of pride, coquetry, and a gleam of 
mirthfulness, which impressed Copley with^ the 
idea that the image was secretly enjoying, the 
perplexing admiration of himself and other be- 
holders. 

" And will you," said he to the carver, ^^ permit 
this masterpiece to become the figure-head of a 
vessel ? Give the honest captain yonder figure 
of Britannia, — it will answer his purpose far 
better, — and send this fairy queen to England, 
where, for aught I know, it may bring you a 
thousand pounds." 

^^ I have not wrought it for money," said 
Drowne. 

"What sort of a fellow is this ! " thought 
Copley. " A Yankee, and throw away the chance 
of making his fortune ! He has gone mad ; and 
thence has come this gleam of genius." 

There was still further proof of Browne's 
lunacy, if credit were due to the rumor that he 
had been seen kneeling at the feet of the oaken 
lady, and gazing with a lover's passionate ardor 
into the face that his own hands had created. 
The bigots of the day hinted that it would be no 
matter of surprise if an evil spirit w^ere allowed to 
enter this beautiful form and seduce the carver 
to destruction. 



MOSSES FROM AAT OLD MANSE. 89 

The fame of the image spread far and wide. 
The inhabitants visited it so universally that 
after a few days of exhibition there was hardly 
an old man or a child who had not become 
minutely familiar with its aspect. Even had the 
story of Drowne's wooden image ended here, its 
celebrity might have been prolonged for many 
years by the reminiscences of those who looked 
upon it in their childhood, and saw nothing else 
so beautiful in after life. But the town was now 
astounded by an event the narrative of which has 
formed itself into one of the most singular legends 
that are yet to be met with in the traditionary 
chimney-corners of the New England metropolis, 
w^here old men and w^omen sit dreaming of the 
past, and wag their heads at the dreamers of the 
present and the future. 

One fine morning, just before the departure of 
the Cynosure on her second voyage to Fayal, the 
commander of that gallant vessel was seen to 
issue from his residence in Hanover Street. He 
was stylishly dressed in a blue broadcloth coat, 
wdth gold-lace at the seams and button-holes, an 
embroidered scarlet waistcoat, a triangular hat, 
with a loop and broad binding of gold, and wore 
a silver-hilted hanger at his side. But the good 
captain might have been arrayed in the robes of 
a prince or the rags of a beggar, without in either 
case attracting notice, while obscured by such a 
companion as now leaned on his arm. The peo- 
ple in the street started, rubbed their eyes, and 
either leaped aside from their path, or stood as if 
transfixed to wood or marble in astonishment. 



90 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

^' Do you see it ? — do you see it ? " cried one, 
with tremulous eagerness. " It is the very 
same ! " 

" The same ? '' answered another, who had ar- 
rived in town only the night before. " Who do 
you mean ? I see only a sea-captain in his shore- 
going clothes, and a young lady in a foreign 
habit, with a bunch of beautiful flowers in her 
hat. On my word, she is as fair and bright a 
damsel as my eyes have looked on this many a 
day ! " 

" Yes ; the same 1 — the very same ! " repeated 
the other. " Browne's wooden image has come 
to life 1 " 

Here was a miracle indeed ! Yet, illurninated 
by the sunshine, or darkened by the alternate 
shade of the houses, and with its garments flut- 
tering lightly in the morning breeze, there passed 
the image along the street. It was exactly and 
minutely the shape, the garb, and the face which 
the townspeople had so recently thronged to see 
and admire. Not a rich flower upon her head, 
not a single leaf, but had had its prototype in 
Browne's wooden workmanship, although now 
their fragile grace had become flexible, and was 
shaken by every footstep that the wearer made. 
The broad gold chain upon the neck was identi- 
cal with the one represented on the image, and 
glistened with the motion imparted by the rise 
and fall of the bosom which it decorated. A real 
diamond sparkled on her finger. In her right 
hand she bore a pearl and ebony fan, which she 
flourished with, a fantastic and bewitching 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 91 

coquetry, that was likewise expressed in all her 
movements as well as in the style of her beauty 
and the attire that so well harmonized with it. 
The face, with its bri.iiant depth of complexion, 
had the same piquancy of m rthful mischief that 
was fixed upon the countenance of the image, 
but which was here varied and continually shift- 
ing, yet always essentially the same, like the 
sunny gleam upon a bubbling fountain. On the 
whole, there was something so airy and yet so 
real in the figure, and withal so perfectly did it 
represent Browne's image, that people knew not 
whether to suppose the magic w^ood etherealized 
into a spirit or warmed and softened into an 
actual woman. 

" One thing is certain," muttered a Puritan of 
the old stamp, " Drowne has sold himself to the 
Devil ; and doubtless this gay Captain Hunne- 
w^ell is a party to the bargain " 

"And I," said a young man who overheard 
him, "^ would almost conj Ut o be the third vic- 
tim, for the liberty of ^al'^txng those lovely lips." 

" And so w^ould I," said Copley, the painter, 
'^ for the privilege of takino* her picture." 

The image, or the apparition, whichever it 
might be, still escorted by the bola captain, pro- 
ceeded from Hanover Street through some of the 
cross lanes that make this portion of the town so 
intricate, to Ann Street, tnence into Dock Square, 
and so downward to Drowne's shop, which stood 
just on the water's edge. The crowd still fol- 
lowed, gathering volume as it rolled along. 
Never had a modern miracle occurred in such 



92 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

broad daylight, nor in the presence of such a 
multitude of witnesses. The airy image, as if 
conscious that she was the object of the murmurs 
and disturbance that swelled behind her, ap- 
peared slightly vexed and flustered, yet still in a 
manner consistent with the light vivacity and 
sportive mischief that were written in her coun- 
tenance. She was observed to flutter her fan 
with such vehement rapidity that the elaborate 
delicacy of its workmanship gave way, and it re- 
mained broken in her hand. 

Arriving at Browne's door, while the captain 
threw it open, the marvellous apparition paused 
an instant on the threshold, assuming the very 
attitude of the image, and casting over the crowd 
that glance of sunny coquetry which all remem- 
bered on the face of the oaken lady. She and 
her cavalier then disappeared. 

" Ah ! '' murmured the crowd, drawing a deep 
breath, as with one vast pair of lungs. 

" The world looks darker now that she has 
vanished," said some of the young men. 

But the aged, whose recollections dated as far 
back as witch times, shook their heads, and hinted 
that our forefathers would have thought it a 
pious deed to burn the daughter of the oak with 
Are. 

" If she be other than a bubble of the ele- 
ments," exclaimed Copley, '' I must look upon 
her face again." 

He accordingly entered the shop ; and there, 
in her usual comer, stood the image, gazing at 
him., as it might seem, with the very same ex- 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 93 

pression of mirthful mischief that had been the 
farewell look of the apparition when, but a mo- 
ment before, she turned her face towards the 
crowd. The carver stood beside his creation, 
mending the beautiful fan, which by some acci- 
dent was "broken in her hand. But there was no 
longer any motion in the life-like image, nor any 
real woman in the workshop, nor even the witch- 
craft of a sunny shadow, that might have deluded 
people's eyes as it flitted along the street. Cap- 
tain Hunnewell, too, had vanished. His hoarse, 
sea-breezy tones, however, were audible on the 
other side of a door that opened upon the water. 

" Sit down in the stern sheets, my lady," said 
the gallant captain. " Come, bear a hand, you 
lubbers, and set us on board in the turning of a 
minute-glass." 

And then was heard the stroke of oars. 

" Drowne," said- Copley, with a smile of intel- 
ligence, " you have been a truly fortunate man. 
What painter or statuary ever had such a sub- 
ject ! No wonder that she inspired a genius into 
you, and first created the artist who afterwards 
created her image." 

Drowne looked at him w^ith a visage that bore 
the traces of tears, but from which the light of 
imagination and sensibility, so recently illuminat- 
ing it, had departed. He was again the mechani- 
cal carver that he had been known to be all his 
lifetime. 

*' I hardly understand what you mean, Mr. Cop- 
ley," said he, putting his hand to his brow. " This 
image ! Can it have been my work ? Well, I 



94 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

have wrought it in a kind of dream ; and now 
that I am broad awake I must set about finishing 
yonder figure of Admiral Vernon." 

And forthwith he employed himself on the stolid 
countenance of one of his wooden progeny, and 
completed it in his own mechanical style, from 
which he was never known afterwards to deviate. 
He followed his business industriously for many 
years, acquired a competence, and in the latter 
part of his life attained to a dignified station in 
the church, being remembered in records and tra- 
ditions as Deacon Drow^ne, the carver. One of 
his productions, an Indian chief, gilded all over, 
stood during the better part of a century on the 
cupola of the Province House, bedazzling the 
eyes of those who looked upward, like an angel 
of the sun. Another work of the good deacon's 
hand — a reduced Hkeness of his friend Captain 
Hunnew^ell, holding a telescope and quadrant — • 
may be seen to this day, at the corner of Broad 
and State Streets, serving in the useful capacity 
of sign to the shop of a nautical-instrument maker. 
We know not how to account for the inferiority 
of this quaint old figure as compared with the 
recorded excellence of the Oaken Lady, unless on 
the supposition that in every human spirit there 
is imagination, sensibility, creative power, genius, 
which, according to circumstances, may either be 
developed in this world, or shrouded in a mask 
of dulness until another state of being. To our 
friend Drowne there came a brief season of ex- 
citement, kindled by love. It rendered him a 
genius for that one occasion, but, quenched in dis- 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 95 

appointment, left him again the mechanical carver 
in wood, without the power even of appreciating 
the work that his own hands had wrought. Yet,. 
who can doubt that the very highest state to which 
a human spirit can attain, in its loftiest aspira- 
tions, is its truest and most natural state, and 
that Drowne was more consistent with himself 
when he wrought the admirable figure of the mys- 
terious lady, than when he perpetrated a whole 
progeny of blockheads ? 

There was a rumor in Boston, about this period^ 
that a young Portuguese lady of rank, on some 
occasion of political or domestic disquietude, had 
fled from her home in Fayal and put herself under 
the protection of Captain Hunnewell, on board 
of whose vessel, and at whose residence, she was 
sheltered until a change of affairs. This fair 
stranger must have been the original of Browne's 
Wooden Image. 



96 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE. 

A GRAVE figure, with a pair of mysterious spec* 
tacles on his nose and a pen behind his ear, was 
seated at a desk in the corner of a metropolitan 
office. The apartment was fitted up with a coun- 
ter, and furnished with an oaken cabinet and a 
chair or two, in simple and business-like style. 
Around the walls were stuck advertisements of 
articles lost, or articles wanted, or articles to be 
disposed of ; in one or another of which classes 
were comprehended nearly all the conveniences, 
or otherwise, that the imagination of man has con- 
trived. The interior of the room was thrown into 
shadow, partly by the tall edifices that rose on the 
opposite side of the street, and partly by the im- 
mense show-bills of blue and crimson paper that 
were expanded over each of the three windows. 
Undisturbed by the tramp of feet, the rattle of 
wheels, the hum of voices, the shout of the city 
crier, the scream of the newsboys, and other 
tokens of the multitudinous life that surged along 
in front of the office, the figure at the desk pored 
diligently over a folio volume, of ledger-like size 
and aspect. He looked like the spirit of a record 
— the soul of his own great volume — made visible 
in mortal shape. 

But scarcely an instant elapsed without the ap- 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



97 



pearance at the door of some individual from the 
busy population whose vicinity was manifested by 
so much buzz, and clatter, and outcry. Now, it 
was a thriving mechanic in quest of a tenement 
that should come within his moderate means of 
rent ; now, a ruddy Irish girl from the banks of 
Killarney, wandering from kitchen to kitchen of 
our land, while her heart still hung in the peat- 
smoke of her native cottage ; now, a single gen- 
tleman looking out for economical board ; and 
now — for this establishment offered an epitome 
of worldly pursuits — it was a faded beauty inquir- 
ing for her lost bloom ; or Peter Schlemihl, for 
his lost shadow^ ; or an author of ten years' stand- 
ing, for his vanished reputation ; or a moody man, 
for yesterday's sunshine. 

At the next lifting of the latch there entered a 
person with his hat awry upon his head, his clothes 
perversely ill-suited to his form, his eyes star- 
ing in directions opposite to their intelligence, and 
a certain odd unsuitableness pervading his whole 
figure. Wherever he might chance to be, wheth- 
er in palace or cottage, church or market, on 
land or sea, or even at his own fireside, he must 
have worn the characteristic expression of a maa 
out of his right place. 

" This," inquired he, putting his question in: 
the form of an assertion, — " this is the Central 
Intelligence Office ? '* 

** Even so," answered the figure at the desk, 
turning another leaf of his volume ; he then; 
looked the applicant in the face and said briefly^ 
" Your business ? " 



98 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

^' I want," said the latter, with tremulous ear- 
nestness, " a place ! '' 

" A place ! and of what nature ? '^ asked the 
Intelligencer. " There are many vacant, or soon 
to be so, some of which will probably suit, since 
they range from that of a footman up to a seat 
at the council-board, or in the cabinet, or a throne, 
or a presidential chair.'^ 

The stranger stood pondering before the desk 
with an unquiet, dissatisfied air, — a dull, vague 
pain of heart, expressed by a slight contortion of 
the brow, — an earnestness of glance, that asked 
and expected, yet continually wavered, as if dis- 
trusting. In short, he evidently wanted, not in a 
physical or intellectual sense, but with an urgent 
moral necessity that is the hardest of all things 
to satisfy, since it knows not its own object. 

" Ah, you mistake me ! '' said he at length, with 
a gesture of nervous impatience. " Either of the 
places you mention, indeed, might answer my pur- 
pose ; or, more probably, none of them. I want my 
places ; my own place ! my true place in the world ! 
my proper sphere ! my thing to do, which Nature 
intended me to perform when she fashioned me 
thus awry, and which I have vainly sought all my 
lifetime ! Whether it be a footman's duty or a 
king's is of little consequence, so it be naturally 
mine. Can you help me here ? " 

" I will enter your application,'' answered the 
Intelligencer, at the same time writing a few lines 
in his volume. " But to undertake such a busi- 
ness, I tell you frankly, is quite apart from the 
ground covered by my official duties. Ask for 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 99 

something specific, and it may doubtless be 
negotiated for you, on your compliance with the 
conditions. But were I to go further, I should 
have the whole population of the city upon my 
shoulders ; since far the greater proportion of 
them are, more or less, in your predicament." 

The applicant sank into a fit of despondency, 
and passed out of the door without again lifting 
his eyes ; and, if he died of the disappointment, 
he was probably buried in the wrong tomb, in- 
asmuch as the fatality of such people never de- 
serts them, and, whether alive or dead, they are 
invariably out of place. 

Almost immediately another foot was heard on 
the threshold. A youth entered hastily, and 
threw a glance around the office to ascertain 
whether the Man of Intelligence was alone. He 
then approached close to the desk, blushed like a 
maiden, and seemed at a loss how to broach his 
business. 

" You come upon an affair of the heart," said 
the official personage, looking into him through 
his mysterious spectacles. " State it in as few 
words as may be." 

" You are right," replied the youth. " I have 
a heart to dispose of." 

" You seek an exchange ? " said the Intelli- 
gencer. " Foolish youth, why not be contented 
with your own ? " 

'' Because," exclaimed the young man, losing 
his embarrassment in a passionate glow, — " be- 
cause my heart burns me with an intolerable fire ; 
it tortures me all day long with yearnings for I 



joo MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

know not what, and feverish throbbings, and the 
pangs of a vague sorrow ; and it awakens me in 
the night-time with a quake, w^hen there is noth- 
ing to be feared. I cannot endure it any longer. 
It were wiser to throw away such a heart, even if 
it brings me nothing in return.'^ 

*' O, very well," said the man of office, making 
an entry in his volume. " Your affair will be eas- 
ily transacted. This species of brokerage makes 
no inconsiderable part of my business ; and there 
is always a large assortment of the article to se- 
lect from. Here, if I mistake not, comes a pretty 
fair sample." 

Even as he spoke the door was gently and 
■slowly thrust ajar, affording a glimpse of the 
slender figure of a young girl, who, as she timidly 
entered, seemed to bring the light and cheerful- 
ness of the outer atmosphere into the somewhat 
gloomy apartment. We know not her errand 
there, nor can we reveal whether the young man 
gave up his heart into her custody. If so, the ar- 
rangement was neither better nor worse than in 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, where the 
parallel sensibilities of a similar age, importu- 
nate affections, and the easy satisfaction of char- 
acters not deeply conscious of themselves, supply 
the place of any profounder sympathy. 

Not always, however, was the agency of the pas- 
sions and affections an office of so li e trouble. 
It happened, rarely, indeed, in proportion to the 
cases that came under an ordinary rule, but still 
it did happen, that a heart was occasionally 
brought hither of such exquisite material, so 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. loi 

delicately attempered, and so curiously wrought^ 
that no other heart could be found to match it. 
It might almost be considered a misfortune, in a 
worldly point of view, to be the possessor of such 
a diamond of the purest water ; since in any 
reasonable probability it could only be exchanged 
for an ordinary pebble, or a bit of cunningly 
manufactured glass, or, at least, for a jewel of 
native richness, but ill-set, or with some fatal flaw^ 
or an earthy vein running through its central 
lustre. To choose another figure, it is sad that 
hearts which have their wellspring in the infinite, 
and contain inexhaustible sympathies, should 
ever be doomed to pour themselves into shallow 
vessels, and thus lavish heir rich affections on 
the ground. Strange that the finer and deeper 
nature, whether in man or woman, while pos- 
sessed of every other delicate instinct, should so 
often lack that most invaluable one of preserving 
itself from contamination with what is of a baser 
kind ! Sometimes, it is true, the spiritual fountain 
is kept pure by a wisdom within itself, and sparkles 
into the light of heaven without a stain from the 
earthy strata through which it had gushed up- 
ward. And sometimes, even here on earth, the 
pure mingles with the pure, and the inexhaustible 
is recompensed with the infinite. But these mira- 
cles, though he should claim the credit of them, 
are far beyond the scope of such a superficial 
agent in human affairs as the figure in the myste- 
rious spectacles. 

Again the door v^as opened, admitting the 
bustle of the city with a fresher reverberation 



102 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

into the Intelligence Office. Now entered a man 
of woe-begone and downcast look ; it was such 
an aspect as if he had lost the very soul out of his 
body, and had traversed all the world over, search- 
ing in the dust of the highways, and along the 
shady footpaths, and beneath the leaves of the 
forest, and among the sands of the sea-shore, in 
hopes to recover it again. He had bent an 
anxious glance along the pavement of the street 
as he came' hitherward ; he looked also in the 
angle of the doorstep, and upon the floor of the 
room ; and, finally, coming up to the Man of 
Intelligence, he gazed through the inscrutable 
spectacles which the latter wore, as if the lost 
treasure might be hidden within his eyes. 

*' I have lost " he began ; and then he 

paused. 

" Yes," said the Intelligencer, "I see that you 
have lost, — but what ? '' 

"I have lost a precious jewel!'' replied the 
unfortunate person, " the like o wh'ch is not to 
be foui.d among any prince's tr asur^o. While I 
possessed it, the contemplation of '^^as my sole 
and ufficient happiness. No j^rice should have 
purchased it of me : but it has fallen from my 
bosom where I wore it in my careless wanderings 
about the city." 

After causing the stranger to describe the marks 
of his lost jewel, the Intelligencer opened a drawer 
of the oaken cabinet which has been mentioned 
as forming a part of the furniture of the room. 
Here were deposited whatever articles had been 
picked up in the streets, until the right owners 



MOSSES FROM AN' OLD MANSE, 103 

should claim them. It was a strange and 
heterogeneous collection. Not the least remark- 
able part of it was a great number of wedding- 
rings, each one of which had been riveted upon 
the finger with holy vows, and all the mystic 
potency that the most solemn rites could attain, 
but had, nevertheless, proved too sHppery for the 
wearer's vigilance. The gold of some was worn 
thin, betokening the attrition of years of wedlock ; 
others, glittering from the jeweller's shop, must 
have been lost within the honeymoon. There 
were ivory tablets, the leaves scribbled over with 
sentiments that had been the deepest truths of 
the writer's earlier years, but which were now quite 
obliterated from his memory. So scrupulously 
were articles preserved in this depository, that 
not even withered flowers were rejected ; white 
roses, and blush-roses, and moss-roses, fit emblems 
of virgin purity and shamefacedness, which had 
been lost or flung away, and trampled into the 
pollution of the streets ; locks of hair, — the 
golden and the glossy dark, — the long tresses of 
woman and the crisp curls of man, signified that 
lovers were now and then so heedless of the faith 
intrusted to them as to drop its symbol from the 
treasure-place of the bosom. Many of these 
things were imbued with perfumes, and perhaps 
a sweet scent had departed from the lives of their 
former possessors ever since they had so wilfully 
or negligently lost them. Here were gold pencil- 
cases, little ruby hearts with golden arrows through 
them, bosom-pins, pieces of coin, and small arti- 
cles of every description, comprising nearly all that 



I04 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

have been lost since a long time ago. Most 
of them, doubtless, had a history and a meaning, 
if there were time to search it out and room to 
tell it. Whoever has missed anything valuable, 
whether out of his heart, mind, or pocket, would 
do well to make inquiry at the Central Intelligence 
Office. 

And in the corner of one of the drawers of the 
oaken cabinet, after considerable research, was 
found a great pearl, looking like the soul of 
celestial purity, congealed and polished. 

*' There is my jewel ! my very pearl ! '^ cried 
the stranger, almost beside himself with rapture. 
'' It is mine ! Give it me this moment ! or I 
shall perish ! " 

" I perceive," said the Man of Intelligence, 
examining it more closely, ^' that this is the Pearl 
of Great Price." 

'' The very same," answered the stranger. 
^' Judge, then, of my misery at losing it out of 
my bosom ! Restore it to me ! I must not live 
without it an instant longer." 

^* Pardon me," rejoined the Intelligencer, 
calmly, '' you ask what is beyond my duty. This 
pearl, as you well know, is held upon a peculiar 
tenure ; and having once let it escape from your 
keeping, you have no greater claim to it — nay, 
not so great — as any other person. I cannot 
give it back." 

Nor could the entreaties of the miserable man 
— who saw before his eyes the jewel of his life 
without the power to reclaim it — soften the heart 
of this stern being, impassive to human sympathy, 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 105 

though exercising such an apparent influence 
over human fortunes. Finally the loser of the 
inestimable pearl clutched his hands among his 
hair, and ran madly forth into the world, which 
was affrighted at his desperate looks. There 
passed him on the doorstep a fashionable young 
gentleman, whose business was to inquire for a 
damask rosebud, the gift of his lady-love, which 
he had lost out of his buttonhole within an hour 
after receiving it. So various were the errands 
of those who visited this Central Oflice, where 
all human wishes seemed to be made known, 
and, so far as destiny would allow, negotiated to 
their fulfilment. 

The next that entered was a man beyond the 
middle age, bearing the look of one who knew 
the world and his own course in it. He had just 
alighted from a handsome private carriage, which 
had orders to wait in the street while its owner 
transacted his business. This person came up 
to the desk with a quick, determined step, and 
looked the Intelligencer in the face with a res- 
olute eye ; though, at the same time, some secret^ 
trouble gleamed from it in red and dusky light. 

" I have an estate to dispose of,'^ said he, with 
a brevity that seemed characteristic. 

*' Describe it,'' said the Intelligencer. 

The applicant proceeded to give the bound- 
aries of his property, its nature, comprising till- 
age, pasture, woodland, and pleasure-grounds, in 
ample circuit ; together with a mansion-house, in 
the construction of which it had been his object 
to realize a castle in the air, hardening its shad- 



io6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

owy walls into granite, and rendering its vision- 
ary splendor perceptible to the awakened eye. 
Judging from his description, it was beautiful 
enough to vanish like a dream, yet substantial 
enough to endure for centuries. He spoke, too, 
of the gorgeous furniture, the refinements of up- 
holstery, and all the luxurious artifices that com- 
bined to render this a residence where life might 
flow onward in a stream of golden days, undis- 
turbed by the ruggedness which fate loves to 
fling into it. 

" I am a man of strong will," said he, in con- 
clusion ; ** and at my first setting out in life, as a 
poor, unfriended youth, I resolved to make my- 
self the possessor of such a mansion and estate 
as this, together with the abundant revenue nec- 
essary to uphold it. I have succeeded to the 
extent of my utmost wish. And this is the estate 
which I have now concluded to dispose of." 

" And your terms ? " asked the Intelligencer, 
after taking down the particulars with which the 
stranger had supplied him. 

^' Easy, abundantly easy ! " answered the suc- 
cessful man, smiling, but with a stern and almost 
frightful contraction of the brow, as if to quell an 
inward pang. ^M have been engaged in various 
sorts of business, — a distiller, a trader to Africa, 
an East India merchant, a speculator in the 
stocks, — and, in the course of these affairs, have 
contracted an encumbrance of a certain nature. 
The purchaser of the estate shall merely be re- 
quired to assume this burden to himself." 

*' I understand you," said the Man of Intelli- 



MOSSES FROM AJV OLD MANSE, 107 

gence, putting his pen behind his ear. *^ I fear 
that no bargain can be negotiated on these con- 
ditions. Very probably the next possessor may 
acquire the estate with a similar encumbrance, 
but it will be of his own contracting, and will not 
lighten your burden in the leasf 

" And am I to live on/' fiercely exclaimed the 
stranger, ^' with the dirt of these accursed acres 
and the granite of this infernal mansion crushing 
down my soul ? How, if I should turn the edifice 
into an almshouse or a hospital, or tear it down 
and build a church t '^ 

" You can at least make the experiment,'^ said 
the Intelligencer ; " but the whole matter is one 
which you must settle for yourself." 

The man of deplorable success withdrew, and 
got into his coach, which rattled off lightly over 
the wooden pavements, though laden with the 
w^eight of much land, a stately house, and pon- 
derous heaps of gold, all compressed into an evil 
conscience. 

There now appeared many applicants for 
places ; among the most noteworthy of whom 
was a small, smoke-dried figure, who gave him- 
self out to be one of the bad spirits that had 
waited upon Dr. Faustus in his laboratory. He 
pretended to show a certificate of character, 
which, he averred, had been given him by that 
famous necromancer, and countersigned by sev- 
eral masters whom he had subsequently served. 

" I am afraid, my good friend," observed the 
Intelligencer, '^ that your chance of getting a serv- 
ice is but poor. Nowadays, men act the evil 



jo8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

spirit for themselves and their neighbors, and 
play the part more effectually than ninety-nine 
out of a hundred of your fraternity." 

But, just as the poor fiend was assuming a va- 
porous consistency, being about to vanish through 
the floor in sad disappointment and chagrin, the 
editor of a political newspaper chanced to enter 
the office in quest of a scribbler of party para- 
graphs. The former servant of Dr. Faustus, with 
some misgivings as to his sufficiency of venom, 
was allowed to try his hand in this capacity. 
Next appeared, likewise seeking a service, the 
mysterious man in Re'd, who had aided Bona- 
parte in his ascent to imperial power. He was 
examined as to his qualifications by an aspiring 
politician, but finally rejected, as lacking famil- 
iarity with the cunning tactics of the present day. 

People continued to succeed each other with 
as much briskness as if everybody turned aside, 
out of the roar and tumult of the city, to record 
here some want, or superfluity, or desire. Some 
had goods or possessions, of which they wished 
to negotiate the sale. A China merchant had 
lost his health by a long residence in that wasting 
climate. He very liberally offered his disease, 
and his wealth along with it, to any physician 
who would rid him of both together. A soldier 
offered his wreath of laurels for as good a leg as 
that which it had cost him on the battle-field. 
One poor weary wretch desired nothing but to 
be accommodated with any creditable method of 
laying down his life ; for misfortune and pecu- 
niary troubles had so subdued his spirits that he 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 109 

could no longer conceive the possibility of happi- 
ness, nor had the heart to try for it. Neverthe- 
less, happening to overhear some conversation 
in the Intelligence Office respecting wealth to be 
rapidly accumulated by a certain mode of spec- 
ulation, he resolved to live out this one other 
experiment of better fortune. Many persons de- 
sired to exchange their youthful vices for others 
better suited to the gravity of advancing age ; a 
few, we are glad to say, made earnest efforts to 
exchange vice for virtue, and, hard as the bargain 
was, succeeded in effecting it. But it was re- 
markable that what all were the least willing to 
give up, even on the most advantageous terms, 
were the habits, the oddities, the characteristic 
traits, the little ridiculous indulgences, somewhere 
between faults and follies, of which nobody but 
themselves could understand the fascination. 

The great folio, in which the Man of Intelli- 
gence recorded all these freaks of idle hearts, 
and aspirations of deep hearts, and desperate 
longings of miserable hearts, and evil prayers of 
perverted hearts, would be curious reading w^ere 
it possible to obtain it for publication. Human 
character in its individual developments — human 
nature in the mass — may best be studied in its 
wishes ; and this was the record of them all. 
There was an endless diversity of mode and cir- 
cumstance, yet withal such a similarity in the 
real groundwork, that any one page of the volume 
— whether written in the days before the Flood, 
or the yesterday that is just gone by, or to be 
written on the morrow that is close at hand, or a 



no MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

thousand ages hence — might serve as a specimen 
of the whole. Not but that there were wild sal- 
lies of fantasy that could scarcely occur to more 
than one man's brain, whether reasonable or 
lunatic. The strangest wishes — yet most inci- 
dent to men who had gone deep into scientific 
pursuits, and attained a high intellectual stage, 
though not the loftiest — were, to contend with 
Nature, and wrest from her some secret, or some 
power, which she had seen fit to withhold from 
mortal grasp. She loves to delude her aspiring 
students, and mock them with mysteries that 
seem but just beyond their utmost reach. To 
concoct new minerals, to produce new forms of 
vegetable life, to create an insect, if nothing 
higher in the living scale, is a sort of wish that 
has often revelled in the breast of a man of 
science. An astronomer, who lived far more 
among the distant worlds of space than in this 
lower sphere, recorded a wish to behold the 
opposite side of the moon, which, unless the 
system of the firmament be reversed, she can 
never turn towards the earth. On the same page 
of the volume was written the wish of a little 
child to have the stars for playthings. 

The most ordinary wish, that was written 
down with wearisome recurrence, was, of course, 
for wealth, wealth, wealth, in sums from a few 
shillings up to unreckonable thousands. But in 
reality this often-repeated expression covered as 
many different desires. Wealth is the golden 
essence of the outward world, embodying almost 
everything that exists beyond the limits of the 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 1 1 1 

soul ; and therefore it is the natural yearning for 
the life in the midst of which we find ourselves, 
and of which gold is the condition of enjoyment, 
that men abridge into this general wish. Here 
and there, it is true, the volume testified to some 
heart so perverted as to desire gold for its own 
sake. Many wished for power ; a strange desire 
indeed, since it is but another form of slavery. 
Old people wished for the delights of youth ; a 
fop for a fashionable coat ; an idle reader, for a 
new novel ; a versifier, for a rhyme to some 
stubborn w^ord ; a painter, for Titian's secret of 
coloring : a prince, for a cottage ; a republican^ 
for a kingdom and a palace ; a libertine, for his 
neighbor's wife ; a man of palate, for green peas ; 
and a poor man, for a crust of bread. The 
ambitious desires of public men, elsewhere so 
craftily concealed, v^^ere here expressed openly 
and boldly, side by side with the unselfish wishes 
of the philanthropist for the welfare of the race, 
so beautiful, so comforting, in contrast with the 
egotism that continually weighed self against the 
world. Into the darker secrets of the Book of 
Wishes we will not penetrate. 

It would be an instructive employment for a 
student of mankind, perusing this volume care- 
fully and comparing its records with men's per- 
fected designs, as expressed in their deeds and 
daily life, to ascertain how far the one accorded 
with the other. Undoubtedly, in most cases, the 
correspondence would be found remote. The 
holy and generous wish, that rises like incense 
from a pure heart towards heaven, often lavishes 



112 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

its sweet perfume on the blast of evil times. 
The foul, selfish, murderous wish, that steams 
forth from a corrupted heart, often passes into the 
spiritual atmosphere without being concreted 
into an earthly deed. Yet this volume is prob- 
ably truer, as a representation of the human 
heart, than is the living drama of action as it 
evolves around us. There is more of good and 
more of evil in it ; more redeeming points of the 
bad and more errors of the virtuous ; higher up- 
soarings, and baser degradation of the soul ; in 
short, a more perplexing amalgamation of vice 
and virtue than we witness in the outward world. 
Decency and external conscience often produce 
a far fairer outside than is warranted by the stains 
within. And be it owned, on the other hand, 
that a man seldom repeats to his nearest friend, 
any more than he realizes in act, the purest 
wishes, which, at some blessed time or other, 
have arisen from the depths of his nature and 
witnessed for him in this volume. Yet there is 
enough on every leaf to make the good man 
shudder for his own wild and idle wishes, as well 
as for the sinner, whose whole life is the incarna- 
tion of a wicked desire. 

But again the door is opened, and we hear the 
tumultuous stir of the world, — a deep and awful 
sound, expressing in another form some portion 
of what is written in the volume that lies before 
the Man of Intelligence. A grandfatherly per 
sonage tottered hastily into the office, with such 
an earnestness in his infirm alacrity that his 
white hair floated backward as he hurried up to 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



113. 



the desk, while his dim eyes caught a momentary 
lustre from his vehemence of purpose. This 
venerable figure explained that he was in search 
of To-morrow. 

" I have spent all my life in pursuit of it/' 
added the sage old gentleman, "being assured 
that To-morrow has some vast benefit or other 
in store for me. But I am now getting a little in 
years, and must make haste ; for, unless I over- 
take To-morrow soon, I begin to be afraid it will 
finally escape me." 

" This fugitive To-morrow, my venerable 
friend," said the Man of Intelligence, " is a stray 
child of Time, and is fiying from his father into- 
the region of the infinite. Continue your pur- 
suit, and you will doubtless come up with him ; 
but as to the earthly gifts which you expect, he 
has scattered them all among a throng of Yester- 
days." 

Obliged to content himself with this enigmatical 
response, the grandsire hastened forth with a 
quick clatter of his staff upon the floor ; and as he 
disappeared, a little boy scampered through the 
door in chase of a butterfly which had got astray 
amid the barren sunshine of the city. Had the 
old gentleman been shrewder, he might have 
detected To-morrow under the semblance of that 
gaudy insect. The golden butterfly glistened 
through the shadowy apartment, and brushed its 
wings against the Book of Wishes, and fluttered 
forth again with the child still in pursuit. 

A man now entered, in neglected attire, with 
the aspect of a thinker, but somewhat too rough- 



1 1 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MA ATSE. 

hewn and brawny for a scholar. His face was full 
of sturdy vigor, with some finer and keener attri- 
bute beneath. Though harsh at first, it was tem- 
pered with the glow of a large, warm heart, w^liich 
had force enough to heat his powerful intellect 
through and through. He advanced to the In- 
telligencer and looked at him with a glance of such 
stern sincerity that perhaps few secrets were 
beyond its scope. 

" I seek for Truth," said he. 

" It is precisely the most rare pursuit that has 
ever come under my cognizance," replied the In- 
telligencer, as he made the new inscription in his 
volume. " Most men seek to impose some cun- 
ning falsehood upon themselves for truth. But I 
can lend no help to your researches. You must 
achieve the miracle for yourself. At some for- 
tunate moment you may find Truth at your side, or 
perhaps she may be mistily discerned far in ad- 
vance or possibly behind you." 

^' Not behind me," said the seeker; "for I 
have left nothing on my track without a thorough 
investigation. She flits before me, passing now 
through a naked solitude, and now mingling with 
the throng of a popular assembly, and now writing 
with the pen of a French philosopher, and now 
standing at the altar of an old cathedral, in the 
guise of a Catholic priest, performing the high 
mass. O weary searcher ! But I must not falter ; 
and surely my heart-deep quest of Truth. shall 
avail at last." 

He paused and fixed his eyes upon the Intel- 
ligencer with a depth of investigation that seemed 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 115 

to hold commerce with the inner nature of his 
being, wholly regardless of his external develop- 
ment. 

" And what are you ? " said he. " It will not 
satisfy me to point to this fantastic show of an 
Intelligence Office and this mockery business. 
Tell me what is beneath it, and what your real 
agency in life and your influence upon mankind.'^ 

" Yours is a mind," answered the Man of Intel- 
ligence,^'^ before which the forms and fantasies that 
conceal the inner idea from the multitude vanish 
at once and leave the naked reality beneath. 
Know, then, the secret. My agency in worldly 
action, my connection with the press, and tumult, 
and intermingling, and development of human 
affairs, is merely delusive. The desire of man's 
heart does for him whatever I seem to do. I am 
no minister of action, but the Recording Spirit.'* 

What further secrets were then spoken remains 
a mystery, inasmuch as the roar of the city, the bus- 
tle of human business, the outcry of the jostling 
masses, the rush and tumult of man's life in its noisy 
and brief career, arose so high that it drowned the 
words of these two talkers ; and whether they 
stood talking in the moon, or in Vanity Fair, or in a 
city of this actual world is more than I can say. 



Il6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL. 

One of the few incidents of Indian warfare 
naturally susceptible of the moonlight of romance 
was that expedition undertaken for the defence 
of the frontiers in the year 1725, which resulted 
in the well-remembered " LovelFs Fight." Im- 
agination, by casting certain circumstances judi- 
cially into the shade, may see much to admire in 
the heroism of a little band who gave battle to 
twice their number in the heart of the enemy^s 
country. The open bravery displayed by both 
parties was in accordance with civilized ideas of* 
valor ; and chivalry itself might not blush to 
record the deeds of one or two individuals. The 
battle, though so fatal to those who fought, was 
not unfortunate in its consequences to the coun- 
try ; for it broke the strength of a tribe and con- 
duced to the peace which subsisted during several 
ensuing years. . History and tradition are unusu- 
ally minute in their memorials of this affair ; and 
the captain of a scouting-party of frontier men 
has acquired as actual a military renown as many 
a victorious leader of thousands. Some of the 
incidents contained in the following pages will 
be recognized, notwithstanding the substitution 
of fictitious names, by such as have heard, from 
old men's lips, the fate of the few combatants 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



117 



who were in a condition to retreat after " Lovelies 
Fight.'' 

# # # :^ # 

The early sunbeams hovered cheerfully upon 
the tree-tops, beneath which two weary and 
wounded men had stretched their limbs the night 
before. Their bed of withered oak-leaves was 
strewn upon the small level space, at the foot of 
rock, situated near the summit of one of the 
gentle swells by which the face of the country is 
there diversified. The mass of granite, rearing 
its smooth, flat surface fifteen or twenty feet above 
their heads, was not unlike a gigantic gravestone, 
upon which the veins seemed to form an inscrip- 
tion in forgotten characters. On a tract of several 
acres around this^rock, oaks and other hard-wood 
trees had supplied the place of the pines, which 
were the usual grawth of the land ; and a young 
and vigorous sapling stood close beside the 
travellers. 

The severe wound of the elder man had prob- 
ably deprived him of sleep ; for, so soon as the 
first ray of sunshine rested on the top of the 
highest tree, he reared himself painfully from his 
recumbent posture and sat erect. The deep 
lines of his countenance and the scattered gray 
of his hair marked him as past the middle age ; 
but his muscular frame would, but for the effects 
of his wound, have been as capable of sustaining 
fatigue as in the early vigor of life. Languor 
and exhaustion now sat upon his haggard features ; 
and the despairing glance which he sent forward 



1 1 8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

through the depths of the forest proved his own 
conviction that his pilgrimage was at an end. 
He next turned his eyes to the companion who 
reclined by his side. The youth — for he had 
scarcely attained the years of manhood — lay, 
with his head upon his arm, in the embrace of an 
unquiet sleep, which a thrill of pain from his 
wounds seemed each moment on the point of 
breaking. His right hand grasped a musket ; 
and, to judge from the violent action of his 
features, his slumbers were bringing back a vision 
of the conflict of which he was one of the few 
survivors. A shout — deep and loud in his dream- 
ing fancy — found its way in an imperfect murmur 
to his lips ; and, starting even at the slight sound 
of his own voice, he suddenly awoke. The first 
act of reviving recollection was to make anxious 
inquiries respecting the condition of his wounded 
fellow-traveller. The latter shook his head. 

" Reuben, my boy," said he, " this rock be- 
neath which we sit will serve for an old hunter's 
gravestone. There is many and many a long 
mile of howling wilderness before us yet ; nor 
would it avail me anything if the smoke of my 
own chimney were but on the other side of that 
swell of land. The Indian bullet was deadlier 
than I thought." 

^' You are weary with our three days' travel," 
replied the youth, " and a little longer rest will 
recruit you. Sit you here while I search the 
woods for the herbs and roots that must be our 
sustenance ; and, having eaten, you shall lean on 
me, and we will turn our faces homeward. I 



MOSSES FROM A AT OLD MANSE, 119 

doubt not that, with my help, you can attain to 
some one of the frontier garrisons." 

" There is not two days' life in me, Reuben," 
said the other, calmly, " and I will no longer 
burden you with my useless body, when you can 
scarcely support your own. Your wounds are 
deep and your strength is failing fast ; yet, if you 
hasten onward alone, you may be preserved. 
For me there is no hope, and I will await death 
here." 

" If it must be so, I will remain and watch by 
you,'' said Reuben, resolutely. 

" No, my son, no," rejoined his companion. 
" Let the wish of a dying man have weight with 
you ; give me one grasp of your hand, and get 
you hence. Think you that my last moments 
will be eased by the thought that I leave you to 
die a more lingering death ? I have loved you 
like a father, Reuben ; and at a time like this I 
should have something of a father's authority. I 
charge you to be gone, that I may die in peace." 

" And because you have been a father to me, 
should I therefore leave you to perish and to lie 
unburied in the wilderness ? " exclaimed the 
youth. "• No ; if your end be in truth approach- 
ing, I will watch by you and receive your parting 
words. I will dig a grave here by the rock, in 
which, if my weakness overcome me, we will rest 
together ; -or, if Heaven gives me strength, I will 
seek my way home." 

*' In the cities and wherever men dwell," re- 
plied the other, *'they bury their dead in the 
earth ; they hide them from the sight of the liv- 



120 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. . 

ing ; but here, where no step may pass perhaps 
for a hundred years, wherefore should I not rest 
beneath the open sky, covered only by the oak- 
leaves when the autumn winds shall strew them ? 
And for a monument, here is this gray rock, on 
which my dying hand shall carve the name of 
Roger Malvin ; and the traveller in days to come 
will know that here sleeps a hunter and a warrior. 
Tarry not, then, for a folly like this, but hasten 
away, if not for your own sake, for hers who will 
else be desolate.'' 

Malvin spoke the last few words in a faltering 
voice, and their effect upon his companten was 
strongly visible. They reminded him that there 
were other and less questionable duties than that 
of sharing the fate of a man whom his death 
could not benefit. Nor can it be affirmed that 
no selfish feeling strove to enter Reuben's heart, 
though the consciousness made him more ear- 
nestly resist his companion's entreaties. 

" How terrible to wait the slow approach of 
death in this solitude ! " exclaimed he. " A 
brave man does not shrink in the battle ; and, 
when friends stand round the bed, even women 
may die composedly ; but here " 

*' I shall not shrink even here, Reuben," inter- 
rupted Malvin. *' I am a man of no weak heart ; 
and, if I were, there is a surer support than that 
of earthly friends. You are young, and life is 
dear to you. Your last moments will need com- 
fort far more than mine ; and when you have 
laid me4n the earth, and are alone, and night is 
settling on the forest, you will feel all the bitter- 



MOSSES FROM AJV OLD MANSE, 12 1 

ness of the death that may now be escaped. But 
I will urge no selfish motive to your generous 
nature. Leave me for my sake, that, having 
said a prayer for your safety, I may have space 
to settle my account undisturbed by worldly 
sorrows." 

" And your daughter, — how shall I dare to 
meet her eye ? '' exclaimed Reuben. " She will 
ask the fate of her father, whose life I vowed to 
defend with my own. Must I tell her that he 
travelled three days' march with me from the 
field of battle, and that then I left him to perish 
in the wilderness ? Were it not better to lie 
down and die by your side than to return safe 
and say this to Dorcas ? " 

" Tell my daughter," said Roger Malvin, " that, 
though yourself sore wounded, and weak, and 
weary, you led ' my tottering footsteps many a 
mile, and left me only at my earnest entreaty, 
because I would not have your blood upon my 
soul. Tell her, that through pain and danger 
you were faithful, and that, if your life-blood 
could have saved me, it would have flowed to its 
last drop ; and tell her that you will be some- 
thing dearer than a father, and that my blessing 
is with you both, and that my dying eyes can see 
a long and pleasant path in which you will jour- 
ney together." 

As Malvin spoke he almost raised himself from 
the ground, and the energy of his concluding 
words seemed to fill the wild and lonely forest 
with a vision of happiness ; but, when he sank 
exhausted upon his bed of oak-leaves, the light 



122 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

which had kindled in Reuben's eye was quenched. 
He felt as if it were both sin and folly to think 
of happiness at such a moment. His compan- 
ion watched his changing countenance, and 
sought with generous art to wile him to his own 
good. 

'' Perhaps I deceive myself in regard to the 
time I have to live," he resumed. " It may be 
that, with speedy assistance, I might recover of 
my wound. The foremost fugitives must, ere 
this, have carried tidings of our fatal battle to 
the frontiers, and parties will be out to succor 
those in like condition with ourselves. Should 
you meet one of these and guide them hither, 
who can tell but that I may sit by my own fire- 
side again 1 " 

A mournful smile strayed across the features 
of the dying man as he insinuated that unfound- 
ed hope ; which, however, was nt)t without its 
effect on Reuben. No merely selfish motive, nor 
even the desolate condition of Dorcas, could have 
induced him to desert his companion at such a 
moment ; but his wishes seized upon the thought 
that Malvin's life might be preserved, and his 
sanguine nature heightened almost to certainty 
the remote possibility of procuring human aid. 

" Surely there is reason, weighty reason, to 
hope that friends are not far distant," he said, 
half aloud. *^ There fled one coward, unwounded, 
in the beginning of the fight, and most probably 
he made good speed. Every true man on the 
frontier would shoulder his musket at the news ; 
and, though no party may range so far into the 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 123 

woods as this, I shall perhaps encounter them in 
one day's march. Counsel me faithfully," he 
added, turning to Malvin, in distrust of his own 
motives. " Were your situation mine, would you 
desert me while life remained ? " 

" It is now twenty years,'' replied Roger Mal- 
vin, sighing, however, as he secretly acknowl- 
edged the wide dissimilarity between the two 
cases, — " it is now twenty years 3ince I escaped 
with one dear friend from Indian captivity near 
Montreal. We journeyed many days through 
the woods, till at length, overcome with hunger 
and weariness, my friend lay down and besought 
me to leave him ; for he knew that, if I remained, 
we both must perish ; and, with but little hope of 
obtaining succor, I heaped a pillow of dry leaves 
beneath his head and hastened on." 

" And did you return in time to save him?" 
asked Reuben, hanging on Malvin's words as if 
they were to be prophetic of his own success. 

*' I did," answered the other. " I came upon 
the camp of a hunting-party before sunset of the 
same day. I guided them to the spot where my 
comrade was expecting death ; and he is now a 
hale and hearty man upon his own farm, far 
within the frontiers, while I lie wounded here in 
the depths of the wilderness." 

This example, powerful in effecting Reuben's 
decision, was aided, unconsciously to himself, by 
the hidden strength of many another motive. 
Roger Malvin perceived that the victory Was 
nearly won. 

" Now, go, my son, and Heaven prosper you ! " 



124 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

he said. " Turn not back with your friends when 
you meet them, lest your wounds and weariness 
overcome you ; but send hitherward two or three, 
that may be spared, to search for me ; and believe 
me, Reuben, my heart will be lighter with every 
step you take towards home.'' Yet there was, 
perhaps, a change both in his countenance and 
voice as he spoke thus ; for, after all, it was a 
ghastly fate to be left expiring in the wilderness. 
Reuben Bourne, but half convinced that he was 
acting rightly, at length raised himself from the 
ground and prepared himself for his departure. 
And first, though contrary to Malvin's wishes, he 
collected a stock of roots and herbs, which had 
been their only food during the last two days. 
This useless supply he placed within reach of 
the dying man, for whom, also, he swept together 
a fresh bed of dry oak-leaves. Then climbing to 
the summit of the rock, which on one side was 
rough and broken, he bent the oak sapling 
downward, and bound his handkerchief to the top- 
most branch. This precaution was not unneces- 
sary to direct any who might come in search of 
Malvin ; for every part of the rock, except its 
broad, smooth front, was concealed at a little 
distance by the dense undergrowth of the forest. 
The handkerchief had been the bandage of a 
wound upon Reuben's arm ; and, as he bound it 
to the tree, he vowed by the blood that stained it 
that he would return, either to save his compan- 
ion's life, or to lay his body in the grave. He 
then descended, and stood, with downcast eyes, 
to receive Roger Malvin's parting words. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 125 

The experience of the latter suggested much 
and minute advice respecting the youth's journey 
through the trackless forest. Upon this subject 
he spoke with calm earnestness, as if he were 
sending Reuben to the battle or the chase while 
he himself remained secure at home, and not as 
if the human countenance that was about to leave 
him were the last he would ever behold. But 
his firmness was shaken before he concluded. 

" Carry my blessing to Dorcas, and say that 
my last prayer shall be for her and you. Bid her 
to have no hard thoughts because you left me 
here," — Reuben's heart smote him, — "for that 
your life would not have weighed with you if its 
sacrifice could have done me good. She will 
marry you after she has mourned a little while 
for her father ; and Heaven grant you long and 
happy days, and may your children's children 
stand round your death-bed ! And, Reuben," 
added he, as the weakness of mortality made its 
way at last, " return, when your wounds are healed 
and your weariness refreshed, — return to this wild 
rock, and lay my bones in the grave, and say a 
prayer over them." 

An almost superstitious regard, arising perhaps 
from the customs of the Indians, whose war was 
with the dead as well as the living, was paid by 
the frontier inhabitants to the rites of sepulture ; 
and there are many instances of the sacrifice of 
life in the attempt to bury those who had fallen 
by the " sword of the wilderness." Reuben, there- 
fore, felt the full importance of the promise which 
he most solemnly made to return and perform 



126 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

Roger Malvin's obsequies. It was remarkable 
that the latter, speaking his whole heart in his 
parting words, no longer endeavored to persuade 
the youth that even the speediest succor might 
avail to the preservation of his life. Reuben was 
internally convinced that he should see Malvin's 
living face no more. His generous nature would 
fain have delayed him, at whatever risk, till the 
dying scene were past ; but the desire of existence 
and the hope of happiness had strengthened in 
his heart, and he was unable to resist them. 

" It is enough," said Roger Malvin, having list- 
ened to Reuben's promise. '' Go, and God speed 
you ! " 

The youth pressed his hand in silence, turned, 
and was departing. His slow and faltering steps, 
however, had borne him but a little way before 
Malvin's voice recalled him. 

'' Reuben, Reuben," said he, faintly ; and Reu- 
ben returned and knelt down by the dying man. 

" Raise me, and let me lean against- the rock," 
was his lasj^ request. " My face will be turned 
towards home, and I shall see you a moment 
longer as you pass among the trees." 

Reuben, having made the desired alteration in 
his companion's posture, again began his solitary 
pilgrimage. He walked more hastily at first than 
was consistent with his strength ; for a sort of 
guilty feeling, which sometimes torments men in 
their most justifiable acts, caused him to seek con- 
cealment from Malvin's eyes ; but after he had 
trodden far upon the rustling forest leaves he 
crept back, impelled by a wild and painful curi* 



MOSSES FROM AJV OLD MANSE, 127 

osity, and, sheltered by the earthly roots of an 
uptorn tree, gazed earnestly at the desolate man. 
The morning sun was unclouded, and the trees 
and shrubs imbibed the sweet air of the month of 
May ; yet there seemed a gloom on Nature's face, 
as if she sympathized with mortal pain and sor- 
row. Roger Malvin's hands were uplifted in a 
fervent prayer, some of the words of which stole 
through the stillness of the woods and entered 
Reuben's heart, torturing it with an unutterable 
pang. They were the broken accents of a petitioa 
for his own happiness and that of Dorcas ; and, 
as the youth listened, conscience, or something 
in its similitude, pleaded strongly with him to re- 
turn and lie down again by the rock. He felt how 
hard was the doom of the kind and generous 
being whom he had deserted in his extremity. 
Death would come like the slow approach of a 
corpse, stealing gradually towards him through 
the forest, and showing its ghastly and motionless 
features from behind a nearer and yet a nearer 
tree. But such must have been Reuben's own 
fate had he tarried another sunset ; and who shall 
impute blame to him if he shrink from so useless 
a sacrifice ? As he gave a parting look, a breeze 
waved the little banner upon the sapling oak and 
reminded Reuben of his vow. 

# ^ # # # 

Many circumstances contributed to retard the 
wounded traveller in his way to the frontiers. On 
the second day the clouds, gathering densely over 
the sky, precluded the possibility of regulating his 
course by the position of the sun ; and he knew 



128 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

not but that every effort of his almost exhausted 
strength was removing him farther from the home 
he sought. His scanty sustenance was supplied 
by the berries and other spontaneous products of 
the forest. Herds of deer, it is true, sometimes 
bounded past him, and partridges frequently 
whirred up before his footsteps ; but his ammuni- 
tion had been expended in the fight, and he had 
no means of slaying them. His wounds, irritated 
by the constant exertion in which lay the only 
hope of life, wore away his strength and at inter- 
vals confused his reason. But, even in the wan- 
derings of intellect, Reuben's young heart clung 
strongly to existence ; and it was only through 
absolute incapacity of motion that he at last sank 
down beneath a tree, compelled there to await 
death. 

In this situation he was discovered by a party 
who, upon the first intelligence of the fight, had 
been despatched to the relief of the survivors. 
They conveyed him to the nearest settlement, 
which chanced to be that of his own residence. 

Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time, 
watched by the bedside of her wounded lover and 
administered all tjiose comforts that are in the 
sole gift of woman's heart and hand. During 
several days Reuben's recollection strayed 
drowsily among the perils and hardships through 
which he had passed, and he was incapable of 
returning definite answers to the inquiries with 
which many were eager to harass him. No au- 
thentic particulars of the battle had yet been cir- 
culated ; nor could mothers, wives, and children 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 129 

tell whether their loved ones were detained by 
captivity or by the stronger chain of death. Dor- 
cas nourished her apprehensions in silence till 
one afternoon when Reuben awoke from an un- 
quiet sleep and seemed to recognize her more per^ 
fectly than at any previous time. She saw that 
his intellect had become composed, and she could 
no longer restrain her filial anxiety. 

** My father, Reuben ? " she began ; but the 
change in her lover's countenance made her 
pause. 

The youth shrank as if with a bitter pain, and 
the blood gushed vividly into his wan and hollow 
cheeks. His first impulse was to cover his face ; 
but, apparently with a desperate effort, he half 
raised himself and spoke vehemently, defending 
himself against an imaginary accusation. 

** Your father was sore wounded in the battle^ 
Dorcas ; and he bade me not burden myself with 
him, but only to lead him to the lakeside, that he 
might quench his thirst and die. But I would 
not desert the old man in his extremity, and, 
though bleeding myself, I supported him ; I gave 
him half my strength, and led him away with me. 
For three days we journeyed on together, and your 
father was sustained beyond my hopes; but^ 
awakening at sunrise on the fourth day, I found 
him faint and exhausted ; he was unable to pro- 
ceed ; his life had ebbed away fast ; and " 

" He died ! '' exclaimed Dorcas, faintly. 

Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge that 
his selfish love of life had hurried him away be- 
jfore her father's fate was decided. He spoke not ; 
9 



130 MOSSES FROM AAT OLD MANSE, 

he only bowed his head ; and, between shame 
and exhaustion, sank back and hid his face in 
the pillow. Dorcas wept when her fears were 
thus confirmed ; but the shock, as it had been 
long anticipated, w^as on that account the less 
violent. 

*' You dug a grave for my poor father in the 
wilderness, Reuben ? " was the question by which 
her filial piety manifested itself. 

" My hands were weak ; but I did w^hat I 
could,'' replied the youth in a smothered tone. 
^^ There stands a noble tombstone above his head*, 
and I would to Heaven I slept as soundly as 
he!" 

Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter 
words, inquired no further at the time ; but her 
heart found ease in the thought that Roger 
Malvin had not lacked such funeral rites as it 
was possible to bestow. The tale of Reuben's 
courage and fidelity lost nothing when she com- 
municated it to her friends ; and the poor youth, 
tottering from his sick chamber to breathe the 
sunny air, experienced from every tongue the 
miserable and humiliating torture of unmerited 
praise. All acknowledged that he might worthily 
demand the hand of the fair maiden to w^hose 
father he had been *^ faithful unto death " ; and, 
as my tale is not of love, it shall sufBce to say 
that in the space of a few months Reuben became 
the husband of Dorcas Malvin. During the 
marriage ceremony the bride was covered with 
blushes ; but the bridegroom's face was pale. 

There was now in the breast of Reuben Bourne 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 131 

an incommunicable thought, — something which 
he was to conceal most heedfully from her whom 
he most loved and trusted. He regretted, deep- 
ly and bitterly, the moral cowardice that had re- 
strained his words w^hen he was about to disclose 
the truth to Dorcas ; but pride, the fear of losing 
her affection, the dread of universal scorn, for- 
bade him to rectify this falsehood. He felt that 
for leaving Roger Malvin he deserved no censure. 
His presence, the gratuitous sacrifice of his own 
life, would have added only another and a need- 
less agony to the last moments of the dying man ; 
but concealment had imparted to a justifiable act 
much of the secret effect of guilt ; and Reuben, 
while reason told him that he had done right, ex- 
perienced in no small degree the mental horrors 
which punish the perpetrator of undiscovered 
crime. By a certain association of ideas, he at 
times almost imagined himself a murderer. For 
years, also, a thought would occasionally recur, 
which, though he perceived all its folly and ex- 
travagance, he had not power to banish from his 
mind. It was a haunting and torturing fancy that 
his father-in-law was yet sitting at the foot of the 
rock, on the withered forest leaves, alive and 
awaiting his pledged assistance. These mental 
deceptions, however, came and went, nor did he 
ever mistake them for realities ; but in the calm- 
est and clearest moods of his mind he was con- 
scious that he had a deep vow unredeemed, and 
that an unburied corpse was calling to him out of 
the wilderness. Yet such was the consequence of 
his prevarication, that he could not obey the call. 



132 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

It was now too late to require the assistance of 
Roger Malvin's friends in performing his long 
deferred sepulture ; and superstitious fears of 
which none were more susceptible than the 
people of the outward settlements, forbade 
Reuben to go alone. Neither did he know where 
in the pathless and illimitable forest to seek that 
smooth and lettered rock at the base of which 
the body lay ; his remembrance of every portion 
of his travel thence was indistinct, and the latter 
part had left no impression upon his mind. 
There was, however, a continual impulse, a voice 
audible only to himself, commanding him to go 
forth and redeem his vow ; and he had a strange 
impression that, were he to make the trial, he 
would be led straight to Malvin's bones. But 
year after year that summons, unheard but felt, 
was disobeyed. His one secret thought became 
like a chain binding down his spirit and like a 
serpent gnawing into his heart ; and he was 
transformed into a sad and downcast yet irritable 
man. 

In the course of a few years after their mar- 
riage changes began to be visible in the external 
prosperity of Reuben and Dorcas, The only 
riches of the former had been his stout heart and 
strong arm; but the latter, her father's sole 
heiress, had made her husband master of a farm, 
under older cultivation, larger, and better stocked 
than most of the frontier establishments. Reu- 
ben Bourne, however, was a neglectful husband- 
man ; and, while the lands of the other settlers 
became annually more fruitful, his deteriorated 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 133 

in the same proportion. The discouragements 
to agriculture were greatly lessened by the cessa- 
tion of Indian war, during which men held the 
plough in one hand and the musket in the other, 
and were fortunate if the products of their dan^ 
gerous labor were not destroyed, either in the 
field or in the barn, by the savage enemy. But 
Reuben did not profit by the altered condition 
of the country ; nor can it be denied that his in- 
tervals of industrious attention to his affairs were 
but scantily rewarded with success. The irri- 
tability by which he had recently become distin- 
guished was another cause of his declining pros- 
perity, as it occasioned frequent quarrels in his 
unavoidable intercourse with the neighboring 
settlers. The results of these were innumerable 
lawsuits ; for the people of New England, in the 
earliest stages and wildest circumstances of the 
country, adopted, whenever attainable, the legal 
mode of deciding their differences. To be brief, 
the world did not go well with Reuben Bourne ; 
and, though not till many years after his mar- 
riage, he was finally a ruined man, with but one 
remaining expedient against the evil fate that 
had pursued him. He was to throw sunlight in- 
to some deep recess of the forest, and seek sub- 
sistence from the virgin bosom of the wilderness. 
The only child of Reuben and Dorcas was a 
son, now arrived at the age of fifteen years, 
beautiful in youth, and giving promise of a 
glorious manhood. He was peculiarly qualified 
for, and already began to excel in, the wild 
accomplishments of frontier life. His foot was 



1^ 



J34 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

fleet, his aim true, his apprehension quick, his 
heart glad and high ; and all who anticipated 
the return of Indian war, spoke of Cyrus Bourne 
as a future leader in the land. The boy was 
loved by his father with a deep and silent 
strength, as if whatever was good and happy in 
his own nature had been transferred to his child, 
carrying his affections with it. Even Dorcas, 
though loving and beloved, was far less dear to 
him ; for Reuben's secret thoughts and insulated 
emotions had gradually made him a selfish man, 
and he could no longer love deeply except where 
he saw or imagined some reflection or likeness 
of his own mind. In Cyrus he recognized what 
he had himself been in other days ; and at inter- 
vals he seemed to partake of the boy's spirit and 
to be revived with a fresh and happy life. Reu- 
ben was accompanied by his son in the expedi- 
tion, for the purpose of selecting a tract of land 
and felling and burning the timber, which neces- 
sarily preceded the removal of the household 
goods. Two months of autumn were thus 
occupied ; after which Reuben Bourne and his 
young hunter returned to spend their last winter 
in the settlements. 

TV* ^ TV -TV nv 

It was early in the month of May that the little 
family snapped asunder whatever tendrils of 
affections had clung to inanimate objects, and 
bade farewell to the few who, in the blight of 
fortune, called themselves their friends. The 
sadness of the parting moment had, to each of 
the pilgrims, its peculiar alleviations. .Reuben, 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 135 

a moody man, and misanthropic because unhappy, 
strode onward with his usual stern brow and 
downcast eye, feeling few regrets and disdaining 
to acknowledge any. Dorcas, while she wept 
abundantly over the broken ties by which her 
simple and affectionate nature had bound itself 
to everything, felt that the inhabitants of her in- 
most heart moved on with her, and that all else 
would be supplied wherever she might go. And 
the boy dashed one teardrop from his eye, and 
thought of the adventurous pleasures of the un- 
trodden forest. 

O, who, in the enthusiasm of a day-dream, has 
not wished that he were a wanderer in a world of 
summer wilderness, with one fair and gentle be- 
ing hanging lightly on his arm '^. In youth his 
free and exulting step would know no barrier but 
the rolling ocean or the snow-topped mountains ; 
calmer manhood would choose a home where 
nature had strewn a double wealth in the vale of 
some transparent stream ; and when hoary age, 
after long, long years of that pure life, stole on 
and found him there, it would find him the father 
of a race, the patriarch of a people, the founder 
of a mighty nation yet to be. When death, like 
the sweet sleep which we welcome after a day 
of happiness, came over him, his far descendants 
would mourn over the venerated dust. Enveloped 
by tradition in mysterious attributes, the men of 
future generations would call him godlike ; and 
remote posterity would see him standing, dimly 
glorious, far up the valley of a hundred centuries. 

The tangled and gloomy forest through which 



136 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

the personages of my tale were wandering differed 
widely from the dreamer's land of fantasy ; yet 
there was something in their way of life that Nature 
asserted as her own, and the gnawing cares which 
went with them from the world were all that now 
obstructed their happiness. One stout and shaggy 
steed, the bearer of all their wealth, did not shrink 
from the added weight of Dorcas ; although her 
hardy breeding sustained her, during the latter 
part of each day's journey, by her husband's side. 
Reuben and his son, their muskets on their 
shoulders and their axes slung behind them, kept 
an unwearied pace, each watching with a hunter's 
eye for the game that supplied their food. When 
hunger bade, they halted and prepared their meal 
on the bank of some unpolluted forest-brook, 
which, as they knelt down with thirsty lips to 
drink, murmured a sweet unwillingness, like a 
maiden at love's first kiss. They slept beneath 
a hut of branches, and awoke at peep of light re- 
freshed for the toils of another day. Dorcas and 
the boy went on joyously, and even Reuben's 
spirit shone at intervals with an outward glad- 
ness ; but inwardly there was a cold, cold sorrow, 
which he compared to the snowdrifts lying deep 
in the glens and hollows of the rivulets while the 
leaves were brightly-green above. 

Cyrus Bourne was sufficiently skilled in the 
travel of the woods to observe that his father did 
not adhere to the course they had pursued in 
their expedition of the preceding autumn. They 
were now keeping farther to the north, striking 
out more directly from the settlements, and into 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. lyj 

a region of which savage beasts and savage men 
were as yet the sole possessors. The boy some- 
times hinted his opinions upon the subject, and 
Reuben listened attentively, and once or twice 
altered the direction of their march in accordance 
with his son's counsel ; but, having so done, he 
seemed ill at ease. His quick and wandering 
glances were sent forward, apparently in search 
of enemies lurking behind the tree-trunks ; and, 
seeing nothing there, he would cast his eyes back- 
wards as if in fear of some pursuer. Cyrus, per- 
ceiving that his father gradually resumed the old 
direction, forbore to interfere ; nor, though some- 
thing began to weigh upon his heart, did his ad- 
venturous nature permit him to regret the in- 
creased length and the mystery of their way. 

On the afternoon of the fifth day they halted, 
and made their simple encampment nearly an 
hour before sunset. The face of the country, for 
the last few miles, had been diversified by swells 
of land resembling huge waves of a petrified sea ; 
and in one of the corresponding hollows, a wdld 
romantic spot, had the family reared their hut 
and kindled their fire. There is something chill- 
ing, and yet heart-warming, in the thought of 
these three, united by strong bands of love and 
insulated from all that breathe beside. The 
dark and gloomy pines looked down upon them, 
and, as the wind swept through their tops, a 
pitying sound was heard in the forest ; or did 
those old trees groan in fear that men were come 
to lay the axe to their roots at last? Reuben 
and his son, while Dorcas made ready their meal, 



138 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

proposed to wander out in search of game, of 
which that day's march had afforded no supply. 
The boy, promising not to quit the vicinity of 
the encampment, bounded off with a step as 
light and elastic asthat of the deer he hoped to 
slay ; while his father, feeling a transient happi- 
ness as he gazed after him, was about to pursue 
an opposite direction. Dorcas, in the mean 
while, had seated herself near their fire of fallen 
branches, upon the moss-grown and mouldering 
trunk of a tree uprooted years before. Her 
employment, diversified by an occasional glance 
at the pot, now beginning to simmer over the 
blaze, was the perusal of the current year's Mas- 
sachusetts Almanac, which, with the exception 
of an old black-letter Bible, comprised all the 
literary wealth of the family. None pay a 
greater regard to arbitrary divisions of time than 
those who are excluded from society ; and 
Dorcas mentioned, as if the information were of 
importance, that it was now the twelfth of May. 
Her husband started. 

*^ The twelfth of May ! I should remember it 
well," muttered he, while many thoughts occa- 
sioned a momentary confusion in his mind. 
" Where am I ? Whither am I wandering ? 
Where did I leave him ?" 

Dorcas, too well accustomed to her hus- 
band's wayward moods to note any peculiarity 
of demeanor, now laid aside the almanac and 
addressed him in that mournful tone which the 
tender-hearted appropriate to griefs long cold 
and dead. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 139 

" It was near this time of the month, eighteen 
years ago, that my poor father left this world for 
a^better. He had a kind arm to hold his head 
and a kind voice to cheer him, Reuben, in his 
last moments ; and the thought of the faithful 
care you took of him has comforted me many a 
time since. O, death would have been awful to 
a solitary man in a wild place like this ! " 

" Pray Heaven, Dorcas,^' said Reuben, in a 
broken voice, — " pray Heaven that neither of us 
three dies solitary and lies unburied in this howl- 
ing wilderness ! '' And he hastened away, leav- 
ing her to watch the fire beneath the gloomy 
pines. 

Reuben Bourne's rapid pace gradually slack- 
ened as the pang, unintentionally inflicted by the 
words of Dorcas, became less acute. Many 
strange reflections, however, thronged upon him ; 
and, straying onward rather like a sleep-walker 
than a hunter, it was attributable to no care of 
his own that his devious course kept him in the 
vicinity of the encampment. His steps were 
imperceptibly led almost in a circle ;. nor did he 
observe that he was on the verge of a tract of 
land heavily timbered, but not with pine-trees. 
The place of the latter was here supplied by 
oaks and other of the harder woods ; and around 
their roots clustered a dense and bushy under- 
growth, leaving, however, barren spaces between 
the trees, thick strewn with withered leaves. 
Whenever the rustling of the branches or the 
creaking of the trunks made a sound, as if the 
forest were waking from slumber, Reuben instinct 



J 40 AIOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

ively raised the musket that rested on his arm, 
and cast a quick sharp glance on every side ; 
but, convinced by a partial observation that no 
animal was near, he would again give himself up 
to his thoughts. He was musing on the strange 
influence that had led him away from his pre- 
meditated course and so far into the depths of the 
wilderness. Unable to penetrate to the secret 
place of his soul where his motives lay hidden, 
he believed that a supernatural voice had called 
him onward and that a supernatural power had 
obstructed his retreat. He trusted that it was 
Heaven's intent to afford him an opportunity of 
expiating his sin ; he hoped that he might find 
the bones so long unburied ; and that, having 
laid the earth over them, peace would throw its 
sunlight into the sepulchre of his heart. From 
these thoughts he was aroused by a rustling in 
the forest at some distance from the spot to 
which he had wandered. Perceiving the motion 
of some object behind a thick veil of under- 
growth, he fired, with the instinct of a hunter and 
the aim of a practised marksman. A low moan, 
which told his success, and by which even 
animals can express their dying agony, was 
unheeded by Reuben Bourne. What were the 
recollections now breaking upon him ? 

The thicket into which Reuben had fired was 
near the summit of a swell of land, and was 
clustered around the base of a rock, which, in 
the shape and smoothness of one of its surfaces, 
was not unlike a gigantic gravestone. As if 
reflected in a mirror, its likeness was in Reuben's 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 141 

memory. He even recognized the veins which 
seemed to form an inscription in forgotten char 
acters : everything remained the same, except 
that a thick covert of bushes shrouded the lower 
part of the rock, and would have hidden Roger 
Malvin had he still been sitting there. Yet in 
the next moment Reuben's eye was caught by 
another change that time had effected since he 
last stood where he was now standing again 
behind the earthy roots of the uptorn tree. The 
sapling to which he had bound the blood-stained 
symbol of his vow had increased and strength- 
ened into an oak, far indeed from its maturity, 
but with no mean spread of shadowy branches. 
There was one singularity observable in this 
tree which made Reuben tremble. The middle 
and lower branches were in luxuriant life, and 
an excess of vegetation had fringed the trunk 
almost to the ground ; but a blight had appar- 
ently stricken the upper part of the oak, and the 
very topmost bough was withered, sapless, and 
utterly dead. Reuben remembered how the lit- 
tle banner had fluttered on that topmost bough, 
when it was green and lovely, eighteen years 
before. Whose guilt had blasted it ? 

^ ^ ^ TT 

Dorcas, after the departure of the two hunters, 
continued her preparations for their evening re- 
past. Her sylvan table was the moss-covered 
trunk of a large fallen tree, on the broadest part 
of which she had spread a snow-white cloth and 
arranged what were left of the bright pewter ves- 
sels that had been her pride in the settlements. 



142 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

It Jiad a strange aspect, that one little spot of 
homely comfort in the desolate heart of nature. 
The sunshine yet lingered upon the higher 
branches of the trees that grew on rising ground; 
but the shadows of evening had deepened into 
the hollow where the encampment was made, and 
the firelight began to redden as it gleamed up 
the tall trunks of the pines or hovered on the 
dense and obscure mass of foliage that circled 
round the spot. The heart of Dorcas was not 
sad ; for she felt that it was better to journey in 
the wilderness with two whom she loved than to 
be a lonely woman in a crowd that cared not for 
her. As she busied herself in arranging seats of 
mouldering wood covered with leaves, for Reu- 
ben and her son, her voice danced through the 
gloomy forest in the measure of a song that she 
had learned in youth. The rude melody, the 
production of a bard who won no name, was de- 
scriptive of a winter evening in a frontier cottage,^ 
when, secured from savage inroad by the high- 
piled snowdrifts, the family rejoiced by their own 
fireside. The whole song possessed the name- 
less charm peculiar to unborrowed thought, but 
four continually recurring lines shone out from 
the rest like the blaze of the hearth whose joys 
they celebrated. Into them, working magic with 
a few simple words, the poet had instilled the 
very essence of domestic love and household 
happiness, and they were poetry and picture 
joined in one. As Dorcas sang, the walls of her 
forsaken home seemed to encircle her ; she no 
longer saw the gloomy pines, nor heard the wind, 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 143 

which still, as she began each verse, sent a heavy 
breath through the branches and died away in a 
hollow moan from the burden of the song. She 
was aroused by the report of a gun in the vicinity 
of the encampment ; and either the sudden sound 
or her loneliness by the glowing fire caused her 
to tremble violently. The next moment she 
laughed in the pride of a mother's heart. 

*' My beautiful young hunter ! My boy has 
slain a deer! " she exclaimed, recollecting that in 
the direction whence the shot proceeded Cyrus 
had gone to the chase. 

She waited a reasonable time to hear her son's 
light step bounding over the rustling leaves to 
tell of his success. But he did not immediately 
appear ; and she sent her cheerful voice among 
the trees in search of him. 

" Cyrus ! Cyrus ! " 

His coming was still delayed ; and she deter- 
mined, as the report had apparently been very 
near, to seek for him in person. Her assistance, 
also, might be necessary in bringing home the 
venison which she flattered herself he had ob- 
tained. She therefore set forward, directing her 
steps by the long-past sound, and singing as she 
went, in order that the boy might be aware of 
her approach and run to meet her. From behind 
the trunk of every tree and from every hiding- 
place in the thick foliage of the undergrowth she 
hoped to discover the countenance of her son, 
laughing with the sportive mischief that is born 
of affection. The sun was now beneath the hori- 
zon, and the light that came down among the 



144 MOSSES FROM AN' OLD MANSE, 

trees was sufficiently dim to create many illu- 
sions in her expecting fancy. Several times she 
seemed indistinctly to see his face gazing out 
from among the leaves ; and once she imagined 
that he stood beckoning to her at the base of a 
craggy rock. Keeping her eyes on this object, 
however, it proved to be no more than the trunk 
of an oak, fringed to the very ground with little 
branches, one of which, thrust out farther than 
the rest, was shaken by the breeze. Making her 
way round the foot of the rock, she suddenly 
found herself close to her husband, who had ap- 
proached in another direction. Leaning upon the 
butt of his gun, the muzzle of which rested upon 
the withered leaves, he was apparently absorbed 
in the contemplation of some object at his feet. 

''How is this, Reuben? Have you slain the 
deer and fallen asleep over him ? '^ . exclaimed 
Dorcas, laughing cheerfully, on her first slight 
observation of his posture and appearance. 

He stirred not, neither did he turn his eyes to- 
wards her ; and a cold, shuddering fear, indefinite 
in its source and object, began to creep into her 
blood. She now perceived that her husband's 
face was ghastly pale, and his features were rigid, 
as if incapable of assuming any other expression 
than the strong despair which had hardened upon 
them. He gave not the slightest evidence that 
he was aware of her approach. 

" For the love of Heaven, Reuben, speak to 
me ! " cried Dorcas ; and the strange sound of 
her own voice affrighted her even more than the 
dead silence. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



US 



Her husband started, stared into her face, 
drew her to the front of the rock, and pointed 
with his finger. 

O, there lay the boy, asleep, but dreamless, 
upon the fallen forest leaves ! His cheek rested 
upon his arm, — his curled locks were thrown 
back from his brow, — his limbs were slightly re- 
laxed. Had a sudden weariness overcome the 
youthful hunter ? Would his mother's voice 
arouse him t She knew that it was death. 

"This broad rock is the gravestone of your 
near kindred, Dorcas," said her husband. 
*' Your tears will fall at once over your father 
and your son." 

She heard him not. With one wild shriek, 
that seemed to force it way from the sufferer's 
inmost soul, she sank' insensible by the side of 
her dead boy. At that moment the withered 
topmost bough' of the oak loosened itself in the 
stilly air, and fell in soft, light fragments upon 
the rock, upon the leaves, upon Reuben, upon 
his wife and child, and upon Roger Malvin's 
bones. Then Reuben's heart was stricken, and 
the tears gushed out like water from a rock. 
The vow that the wounded youth had made the 
blighted man had come to redeem. His sin was. 
expiated, — the curse was gone from him ; and in 
the hour when he had shed blood dearer to him 
than his own, a prayer, the first for years, went 
up to Heaven from the lips of Reuben Bourne. 

10 



146 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



P.'S CORRESPONDENCK 

My unfortunate friend P. has lost the thread 
of his life by the interposition of long intervals 
of partially disordered reason. The past and 
present are jumbled together in his mind in a 
manner often productive of curious results, and 
which will be better understood after the perusal 
of the following letter than from any description 
that I could give. The poor fellow, without once 
stirring from the little whitewashed, iron-grated 
room to which he alludes in his first paragraph, 
is nevertheless a great traveller, and meets in his 
wanderings a variety of personages who have 
long ceased to be visible to any eye save his 
own. In my opinion, all this is not so much a 
delusion as a partly wilful and partly involuntary 
sport of the imagination, to which his disease has 
imparted such morbid energy that he beholds 
these spectral scenes and characters with no less 
distinctness than a play upon the stage, and with 
somewhat more of illusive credence. Many of 
his letters are in my possession, some based upon 
the same vagary as the present one, and others 
upon hypotheses not a whit short of it in absurd- 
ity. The whole form a series of correspondence, 
which, should fate seasonably remove my pool 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 147 

friend from what is to him a world of moonshine, 
I promise myself a pious pleasure in editing for 
the public eye. P. had always a hankering after 
literary reputation, and has made more than one 
unsuccessful effort to achieve it. It would not 
be a little odd, if, after missing his object while 
seeking it by the light of reason, he should prove 
to have stumbled upon it in his misty excursions 
beyond the limits of sanity. 

London, February 29, 1845. 
My dear Friend : Old associations cling to 
the mind with astonishing tenacity. Daily cus- 
tom grows up about us like a stone wall, and 
consolidates itself into almost as material an 
entity as mankind's strongest architecture. It is 
sometimes a serious question with me whether 
ideas be not really visible and tangible, and en- 
dowed with all the other qualities of matter. 
Sitting as I do at this moment in my hired apart- 
ment, writing beside the hearth, over which 
hangs a print of Queen Victoria, listening to the 
muffled roar of the world's metropolis, and with 
a window at but five paces distant, through 
which, whenever I please, I can gaze out on act- 
ual London, — with all this positive certainty as 
to my whereabouts, what kind of notion, do you 
think, is just now perplexing my brain 1 Why, — 
would you believe it ? — that all this time I am 
still an inhabitant of that wearisome little cham- 
ber, — that whitewashed little chamber, — that 
little chamber with its one small window, across 
which, from some inscrutable reason of taste or 



148 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

convenience, my landlord had placed a row of 
iron bars, — that same little chamber, in short, 
whither your kindness has so often brought you 
to visit me ! Will no length of time or breadth 
of space enfranchise me from that unlovely 
abode ? I travel ; but it seems to be like the 
snail, with my house upon my head. Ah, well ! 
I am verging, I suppose, on that period of life 
when present scenes and events make but feeble 
impressions in comparison with those of yore ; so 
that I must reconcile myself to be more and 
more the prisoner of Memory, who merely lets 
me hop about a little with her chain around my 
leg. 

My letters of introduction have been of the 
utmost service, enabling me to make the acquaint- 
ance of several distinguished characters who, 
until now, have seemed as remote from the sphere 
of my personal intercourse as the wits of Queen 
Anne's time or Ben Jonson's compotators at the 
Mermaid. One of the first of which I availed 
myself was the letter to Lord Byron. I found 
his lordship looking much older than I had an- 
ticipated, although, considering his former ir- 
regularities of life and the various wear and tear 
of his constitution, not older than a man on the 
verge of sixty reasonably may look. But I had 
invested his earthly frame, in my imagination, 
with the poet's spiritual immortality. He wears 
a brown wig, very luxuriantly curled, and extend- 
ing down over his forehead. The expression of 
his eyes is concealed by spectacles. His early 
tendency to obesity having increased, Lord Byron 



MOSSES FROM A A OLD MANSE, 



149 



is now enormously fat, — so fat as to give the im- 
pression of a person quite overladen with his own 
flesh, and without sufficient vigor to diffuse his 
personal life through the great mass of corporeal 
substance which weighs upon him so cruelly. 
You gaze at the mortal heap ; and, while it fills 
your eye with what purports to be Byron, you 
murmur within yourself, " For Heaven's sake, 
where is he ? " Were I disposed to be caustic, I 
might consider this mass of earthly matter as the 
symbol, in a material shape, of those evil habits 
and carnal vices which unspiritualize man's nat- 
ure and clog up his avenues of communication 
with the better life. But this would be too harsh ; 
and, besides. Lord Byron's morals have been 
improving while his outward man has swollen to 
such unconscionable circumference. Would that 
he were leaner ; for, though he did me the honor 
to present his hand, yet it was so puffed out with 
alien substance that I could not feel as if I had 
touched the hand that wrote Childe Harold. 

On my entrance his lordship apologized for 
not rising to receive me, on the sufficient plea 
that the gout for several years past had taken up 
its constant residence in his right foot, which 
accordingly was swathed in many rolls of flannel 
and deposited upon a cushion. The other foot 
was hidden in the drapery of his chair. Do you 
recollect whether Byron's right or left foot was 
the deformed one ? 

The noble poet's reconciliation with Lady Byron 
is now, as you are aware, of ten years' standing ; 
nor does it exhibit, I am assured, any symptom 



150 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

of breach or fracture. They are said to be, if 
not a happy, at least a contented, or at all events 
a quiet couple, descending the slope of life with 
that tolerable degree of mutual support which will 
enable them to come easily and comfortably to 
the bottom. It is pleasant to reflect how entirely 
the poet has redeemed his youthful errors in this 
particular. Her ladyship's influence, it rejoices 
me to add, has been productive of the happiest 
results upon Lord Byron in a religious point of 
view. He now combines the most rigid tenets 
of Methodism with the ultra doctrines of the 
Puseyites ; the former being perhaps due to the 
convictions wrought upon his mind by his noble 
consort, while the latter are the embroidery and 
picturesque illumination demanded by his imagi- 
native character. Much of whatever expenditure 
his increasing habits of thrift continue to allow 
him is bestowed in the reparation or beautifying 
of places of worship; and this nobleman, whose 
name was once considered a synonym .of the 
foul fiend, is now all but canonized as a saint in 
many pulpits of the metropolis and elsewhere. 
In politics. Lord Byron is an uncompromising 
conservative, and loses no opportunity, whether 
in the House of Lords or in private circles, of 
denouncing and repudiating the mischievous and 
anarchical notions of his earlier day. Nor does 
he fail to visit similar sins in other people with 
the sincerest vengeance which his somewhat 
blunted pen is capable of inflicting. Southey 
and he are on the most intimate terms. You are 
aware that, some little time before the death of 



MOSSES FROM A AT OLD MANSE. 151 

Moore, Byron caused that brilliant but reprehen- 
sible man to be ejected from his house. Moore 
took the insult so much to heart that, it is said 
to have been one great cause of the fit of illness 
which brought him to the grave. Others pretend 
that the lyrist died in a very happy state of mind, 
singing one of his own sacred melodies, and ex- 
pressing his belief that it would be heard within 
the gate of paradise, and gain him instant and 
honorable admittance. I wish he may have 
found it so. 

I failed not, as you may suppose, in the course 
of conversation with Lord Byron, to pay the 
meed of homage due to a mighty poet, by allu- 
sions to passages in Childe Harold, and Manfred, 
and Don Juan, which have made so large a por- 
tion of the music of my life. My words, whether 
apt or otherwise, were at least warm with the en- 
thusiasm of one worthy to discourse of immortal 
poesy. It was evident, however, that they did 
not go precisely to the right spot. I could per- 
ceive that there was some mistake or other, and 
was not a little angry with myself, and ashamed 
of my abortive attempt to throw back, from my 
own heart to the gifted author's ear, the echo of 
those strains that have resounded throughout the 
world. But by and by the secret peeped quietly 
out. Byron, — I have the information from his 
own lips, so that you need not hesitate to repeat 
it in literary circles, — Byron is preparing a new 
edition of his complete works, carefully corrected, 
expurgated, and amended, in accordance with his 
present creed of taste, morals, politics, and re- 



152 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

. ligion. It so happened that the very passages of 
highest inspiration to which I had alluded were 
among the condemned and rejected rubbish 
which it is his purpose to cast into the gulf of ob- 
livion. To whisper you the truth, it appears to 
me that his passions having burned out, the ex- 
tinction of their vivid and riotous flame has de- 
prived Lord Byron of the illumination by which 
he not merely wrote, but was enabled to feel and 
comprehend what he had written. Positively he 
no longer understands his own poetry. 

This became very apparent on his favoring me 
so far as to read a few specimens of Don Juan in 
the moralized version. Whatever is licentious, 
whatever disrespectful to the sacred mysteries 
of our faith, whatever morbidly melancholic or 
splenetically sportive, whatever assails settled 
constitutions of government or systems of society, 
whatever could wound the sensibility of any mor- 
tal, except a pagan, a republican, or a dissenter, 
has been unrelentingly blotted out, and its place 
supplied by unexceptionable verses in his lord- 
ship's later style. You may judge how much of 
the poem remains as hitherto published. The re- 
sult is not so good as might be wished ; in plain 
terms, it is a very sad affair indeed ; for, though 
the torches kindled in Tophet have been ex- 
tinguished, they leave an abominably ill odor, 
and are succeeded by no glimpses of hallowed 
fire. It is to be hoped, nevertheless, that this 
attempt on Lord Byron's part to atone for his 
youthful errors will at length induce the Dean of 
Westminster, or whatever churchman is concerned, 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 153 

to allow Thorwaldsen's statue of the poet its due 
niche in the grand old Abbey. His bones, you 
know, when brought from Greece, were denied 
sepulture among those of his tuneful brethren 
there. 

What a vile slip of the pen was that ! How 
absurd in me to talk about burying the bones of 
Byron, whom I have just seen alive, and incased 
in a big, round bulk of flesh ! But, to say the 
truth, a prodigiously fat man always impresses 
me as a kind of hobgoblin ; in the very extrava- 
gance of his mortal system I find something akin 
to the immateriality of a ghost. And then that 
ridiculous old story darted into my mind, how 
that Byron died of fever at Missolonghi, above 
twenty years ago. More and more I recognize 
that we dwell in a world of shadows ; and, for my 
part, I hold it hardly worth the trouble to attempt 
a distinction between shadows in the mind and 
shadows out of it. If there be any difference, 
the former are rather the more substantial. 

Only think of my good fortune ! The vener- 
able Robert Burns — now, if I mistake not, in his 
eighty-seventh year — happens to be making a 
visit to London, as if on purpose to afford me an 
opportunity of grasping him by the hand. For 
upwards of twenty years past he has hardly left 
his quiet cottage in Ayrshire for a single night, 
and has only been drawn hither now by the irrc 
sistible persuasions of all the distinguished men 
in England. They wish to celebrate the patri- 
arch's birthday by a festival. It will be the 
greatest literary triumph on record. Pray Heaven 



154 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

the little spirit of life within the aged bard's 
bosom may not be extinguished in the lustre of 
that hour ! I have already had the honor of an 
introduction to him at the British Museum, where 
he was examining a collection of his own unpub- 
lished letters, interspersed with songs, which have 
escaped the notice of all his biographers. 

Poh ! Nonsense ! What am I thinking of ? 
How should Burns have been embalmed in biog- 
raphy when he is still a hearty old man ? 

The figure of the bard is tall and in the highest 
degree reverend, nor the less so that it is much 
bent by the burden of time. His white hair 
floats like a snowdrift around his face, in which 
are seen the furrows of intellect and passion, 
like the channels of headlong torrents that have 
foamed themselves away. The old gentleman is 
in excellent preservation, considering his time 
of life. He has that crickety sort of liveliness, — 
I mean the cricket's humor of chirping for any 
cause or none, — which is perhaps the most favor- 
able mood that can befall extreme old age. Our 
pride forbids us to desire it for ourselves, 
although we perceive it to be a beneficence of 
nature in the case of others. I was surprised to 
find it in Burns. It seems as if his ardent heart 
and brilliant imagination had both burned down 
to the last embers, leaving only a little flickering 
flame in one corner, which keeps dancing upward 
and laughing all by itself. He is no longer capa- 
ble of pathos. At the request of Allan Cunning- 
ham, he attempted to sing his own song to Mary 
in Heaven ; but it was evident that the feeling of 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 155 

those verses, so profoundly true and so simply 
expressed, was entirely beyond the scope of his 
present sensibilities ; and, when a touch of it did 
partially awaken him, the tears immediately 
gushed into his eyes and his voice broke into a 
tremulous cackle. And yet he but indistinctly 
knew wherefore he was weeping. Ah, he must 
not think again of Mary in Heaven until he shake 
off the dull impediment of time and ascend to 
meet her there. 

Burns then began to repeat Tarn O'Shanter ; 
but was so tickled with its wit and humor — of 
which, however, I suspect he had but a tradition- 
ary sense — that he soon burst into a fit of chir- 
ruping laughter, succeeded by a cough, which 
brought this not very agreeable exhibition to a 
close. On the whole, I would rather not have 
witnessed it. It is a satisfactory idea, however, 
that the last forty years of the peasant poet's life 
have been passed in competence and perfect 
comfort. Havtng been cured of his bardic im- 
providence for many a day past, and grown as 
attentive to the main chance as a canny Scotsman 
should be, he is now considered to be quite well 
off as to pecuniary circumstances. This, I sup- 
pose, is worth having lived so long for. 

I took occasion to inquire of some of the 
countrymen of Burns in regard to the health of 
Sir Walter Scott. His condition, 1 am sorry to 
say, remains the same as for ten years past ; it is 
that of a hopeless paralytic, palsied not more in 
body than in those nobler attributes of which the 
body is the instrument. And thus he vegetates 



IS6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

from day to day and from year to year at that 
splendid fantasy of Abbotsford, which grew out 
of his brain, and became a symbol of the great 
romancer^s tastes, feelings, studies, prejudices and 
modes of intellect. Whether in verse, prose, or 
architecture, he could achieve but one thing, al- 
though that one in infinite variety. There he re- 
clines, on a couch in his library, and is said to 
spend whole hours of every day in dictating tales 
to an amanuensis, — to an imaginary amanuensis ; 
for it is not deemed worth any one's trouble now 
to take down what flows from that once brill- 
iant fancy, every image of which was formerly 
worth gold and capable of being coined. Yet 
Cunningham, who has lately seen him, assures 
me that there is now and then a touch of the 
genius, — a striking combination of incident, or a 
picturesque trait of character, such as no other 
man alive could have hit off, — a glimmer from 
that ruined mind, as if the sun had suddenly 
flashed on a half-rusted helmet in the gloom of 
an ancient hall. But the plots of these romances 
become inextricably confused ; the characters 
melt into one another ; and the tale loses itself 
like the course of a stream flowing through muddy 
and marshy ground. 

For my part, I can hardly regret that Sir Walter 
Scott had lost his consciousness of outward 
things before his works went out of vogue. It 
was good that he should forget his fame rather 
than that fame should first have forgotten him. 
Were he still a writer, and as brilliant a one as 
ever, he could no longer maintain anything like 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 157 

the same position in literature. The world, now- 
adays, requires a more earnest purpose, a deeper 
moral, and a closer and homelier truth than he 
was qualified to supply it with. Yet who can be 
to the present generation even what Scott has 
been to the past ? I had expectations from a 
young man, — one Dickens, — who published a few 
magazine articles, very rich in humor, and not 
without symptoms of genuine pathos ; but the 
poor fellow died shortly after commencing an 
odd series of sketches, entitled, I think, the Pick- 
wick Papers. Not impossibly the world has lost 
more than it dreams of by the untimely death of 
this Mr. Dickens. 

Whom do you think I met in Pall Mall the other 
day } You would not hit it in ten guesses. Why, 
no less a man than Napoleon Bonaparte, or all 
that is now left of him, — that is to say, the skin, 
bones, and corporeal substance, little cocked hat, 
green coat, white breeches, and small sword, 
which are still known by his redoubtable name. 
He was attended only by two policemen, who 
walked quietly behind the phantasm of the old 
ex-emperor, appearing to have no duty in regard 
to him except to see that none of the light-fingered 
gentry should possess themselves of the star of 
the Legion of Honor. Nobody save myself so 
much as turned to look after him ; nor, it grieves 
me to confess, could even I contrive to muster 
up any tolerable interest, even by all that the 
warlike spirit, formerly manifested within that 
now decrepit shape, had wrought upon our globe. 
There is no surer method of annihilating the 



158 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

magic influence of a great renown than by ex- 
hibiting the possessor of it in the decline, the 
overthrow, the utter degradation of his powers, — 
buried beneath his own mortality, — and lacking 
even the qualities of sense that enable the most 
ordinary men to bear themselves decently in the 
eye of the world. This is the state to which 
disease, aggravated by long endurance of a 
tropical climate, and assisted by old age, — for he 
is now above seventy, — has reduced Bonaparte. 
The British government has acted shrewdly in 
retransporting him from St. Helena to England. 
They should now restore him to Paris, and there 
let him once again review the relics of his armies. 
His eye is dull and rheumy ; his nether lip hung 
down upon his chin. While I was observing him 
there chanced to be a little extra bustle in the 
street ; and he, the brother of Caesar and 
Hannibal, — the great captain who had veiled the 
world in battle-smoke and tracked it round with 
bloody footsteps, — was seized with a nervous 
trembling, and claimed the protection of the two 
policeman by a cracked and dolorous cry. The 
fellows winked at one another, laughed aside, 
and, patting Napoleon on the back, took each an 
arm and led him away. 

Death and fury ! Ha, villain, how came you 
hither ? Avaunt ! or I fling my inkstand at your 
head. Tush, tush ; it is all a mistake. Pray, my 
dear friend, pardon this little outbreak. The fact 
is, the mention of those two policemen, and their 
custody of Bonaparte, had called up the idea of 
that odious wretch — you remember him well — • 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 159 

who was pleased to take such gratuitous and im- 
pertinent care of my person before I quitted New 
England. Forthwith up rose before my mind's 
eye that same little whitewashed room, with the 
iron-grated window, — strange that it should have 
been iron-grated ! — where, in too easy compliance 
with the absurd wishes of my relatives, I have 
wasted several good years of my life. Positively 
it seemed to me that I was still sitting there, and 
that the keeper — not that he ever was my keeper 
neither, but only a kind of intrusive devil of a 
body-servant — had just peeped in at the door. 
The rascal ! I owe him an old grudge, and will 
find a time to pay it yet. Fie ! fie ! The mere 
thought of him has exceedingly discomposed me. 
Even now that hateful chamber — the iron-grated 
window, which blasted the blessed sunshine as it 
fell through the dusty panes and made it poison 
to my soul — looks more distinct to my view than 
does this my comfortable apartment in the heart 
of London. The reality — that which I know to 
be such — hangs like remnants of tattered scenery 
over the intolerably prominent illusion. Let us 
think of it no more. 

You will be anxious to hear of Shelley. I need 
not say, what is known to all the world, that this 
celebrated poet has for many years past been 
reconciled to the Church of England. In his 
more recent works he has applied his fine powers 
to the vindication of the Christian faith, with an 
especial view to that particular development. 
Latterly, as you may not have heard, he has taken 
orders, and been inducted to a small country 



i6o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

living in the gift of the Lord Chancellor. Just 
now, luckily for me, he has come to the metropolis 
to superintend the publication of a volume of 
discourses treating of the poetico-philosophicai 
proofs of Christianity on the basis of the Thirty- 
nine Articles. On my first introduction I felt 
no little embarrassment as to the manner of com- 
bining what I had to say to the author of Queen 
Mab, the Revolt of Islam, and Prometheus Un- 
bound wdth such acknowledgments as might be 
acceptable to a Christian minister and zealous 
upholder of the Established Church. But Shelley 
soon placed me at my ease. Standing where he 
now does, and reviewing all his successive pro- 
ductions from a higher point, he assures me that 
there is a harmony, an order, a regular procession, 
which enables him to lay his hand upon any one 
of the earlier poems and say, "This is my work," 
with precisely the same complacency of con- 
science wherewithal he contemplates the volume 
of discourses above mentioned. They are like 
the successive steps of a staircase, the lowest of 
which, in the depth of chaos, is as essential to the 
support of the whole as the highest and final one 
resting upon the threshold of the heavens. I felt 
half inclined to ask him what would have been his 
fate had he perished on the lower steps of his 
staircase, instead of building his way aloft into 
the celestial brightness. 

How all this may be I neither pretend to under- 
stand nor greatly care, so long as Shelley has 
really climbed, as it seems he has, from a lowet 
region to a loftier one. Without touching upon 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, i6l 

their religious merits, I consider the productions 
of his maturity superior, as poems, to those of his 
youth. They are warmer with human love, which 
has served as an interpreter between his mind and 
the multitude. The author has learned to dip 
his pen oftener into his heart, and has thereby 
avoided the faults into which a too exclusive use 
of fancy and intellect are wont to betray him. 
Formerly his page was often little other than a 
concrete arrangement of crystallizations, or even 
of icicles, as cold as they were brilliant. Now 
you take it to your heart, and are conscious of a 
heart- warmth responsive to your own. In his 
private character Shelley can hardly have grown 
more gentle, kind, and affectionate than his 
friends always represented him to be up to that 
disastrous night when he was drowned in the 
Mediterranean. Nonsense, again, — sheer non- 
sense ! What anfi I babbling about ? I was think- 
ing of that old figment of his being lost in the 
Bay of Spezzia, and washed ashore near Via 
Reggio, and burned to ashes on a funeral pyre, 
with wine, and spices, and frankincense ; while 
Byron stood on the beach and beheld a flame of 
marvellous beauty rise heavenward from the dead 
poet's heart, and that his fire-purified relics were 
finally buried near his child in Roman earth. If 
all this happened three-and-twenty years ago, how 
could I have met the drowned and burned and 
buried man here in London only yesterday ? 

Before quitting the subject, I may mention that 
Dr. Reginald Heber, heretofore Bishop of Cal- 
cutta, but recently translated to a see in England, 
II 



1 62 MOSSES FROM A A' OLD MANSE, 

called on Shelley while I was with him. They 
appeared to be on terms of very cordial intimacy, 
and are said to have a joint poem in contempla- 
tion. What a strange, incongruous dream is the 
life of man ! 

Coleridge has at 'last finished his poem of 
Christabel. It will be issued entire by old John 
Murray in the course of the present publishing 
season. The poet, I hear, is visited with a 
troublesome affection of the tongue, which has 
put a period, or some lesser stop, to the lifelong 
•discourse that has hitherto been flowing from his 
lips. He will not survive it above a month, un- 
less his accumulation of ideas be sluiced off in 
some other way. Wordsworth died only a week 
or two ago. Heaven rest his soul, and grant 
that he may not have completed The Excursion ! 
Methinks I am sick of everything he wrote, except 
his Laodamia. Jt is very sad, this inconstancy 
of the mind of the poets whom it once worshipped. 
Southey is as hale as ever, and writes with his 
usual diligence. Old Gifford is still alive, in the 
extremity of age, and with most pitiable decay of 
what little sharp and narrow intellect the Devil 
had gifted him withal. One hates to allow such 
a man the privilege of growing old and infirm. It 
takes away our speculative license of kicking him. 

Keats ? No ; I have not seen him except across 
a crowded street, with coaches, drays, horsemen, 
cabs, omnibuses, foot-passengers, and divers other 
sensual obstructions intervening betwixt his small 
and slender figure and my eager glance. I would 
fain have met him on the seashore, or beneath a 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 163 

natural arch of forest trees, or the Gothic arch o£ 
an old cathedral, or among Grecian ruins, or at a. 
glimmering fireside on the verge of evening, or 
at the twilight entrance of a cave, into the dreamy 
depths of which he would have led me by the 
hand ; anywhere, in short, save at Temple Bar, 
where his presence was blotted out by the porter- 
swollen bulks of these gross Englishmen. I 
stood and watched him fading away, fading away 
along the pavement, and could hardly tell whether 
he were an actual man or a thought that had 
slipped out of my mind and clothed itself in 
human form and habiliments merely to beguile 
me. At one moment he put his handkerchief to^ 
his lips, and withdrew it, I am almost certain, 
stained with blood. You never saw anything sO' 
fragile as his person. The truth is, Keats has. 
all his life felt the effects of that terrible bleeding 
at the lungs caused by the article on his Endy- 
mion in the Quarterly Review, and which sa 
nearly brought him to the grave. Ever since he 
has glided about the world like a ghost, sighing 
a melancholy tone in the ear of here and there a 
friend, but never sending forth his voice to greet 
the multitude. I can hardly think him a great 
poet. The burden of a mighty genius would 
never have been imposed upon shoulders so 
physically frail and a spirit so infirmly sensitive. 
Great poets should have iron sinews. 

Yet Keats, though for so many years he has 
given nothing to the world, is understood to have 
devoted himself to the composition of an epic 
poem. Some passages of it have been communi- 



l64 MOSSES FROM AN- OLD MANSE, 

cated to the inner circle of his admirers, and inv 
pressed them as the loftiest strains that have been 
audible on earth since Milton's days. If I can 
obtain copies of these specimens, I will ask you 
to present them to James Russell Lowell, who 
seems to be one of the poet's most fervent and 
worthiest worshippers. The information took 
me by surprise. I had supposed that all Keats's 
poetic incense, without being embodied in human 
language, floated up to heaven and mingled with 
the songs of the immortal choristers, who perhaps 
were conscious of an unknown voice among them, 
and thought their melody the sweeter for it. 
But it is not so ; he has positively written a 
poem on the subject of Paradise Regained, though 
in another sense than that which presented itself 
to the mind of Milton. In compliance, it may 
be imagined, with the dogma of those who pre- 
tend that all epic possibilities in the past history 
of the world are exhausted, Keats has thrown his 
poem forward into an indefinitely remote futurity. 
He pictures mankind amid the closing circum- 
stances of the time-long warfare between good 
and evil. Our race is on the eve of its final 
triumph. Man is within the last stride of perfec- 
tion ; Woman, redeemed from the thraldom 
against which our sibyl uplifts so powerful and 
so sad a remonstrance, stands equal by his side 
or communes for herself with angels ; the Earth, 
sympathizing with her children's happier state, 
has clothed herself in such luxuriant and loving 
beauty as no eye ever witnessed since our first 
parents saw the sun rise over dewy Eden. Nor 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 165 

then indeed ; for this is the fulfilment of what 
was then but a golden promise. But the picture 
has its shadows. There remains to mankind an- 
other peril, — a last encounter with the evil prin- 
ciple. Should the battle go against us, we sink 
back into the slime and misery of ages. If we 
triumph — But it demands a poet's eye to con- 
template the splendor of such a consummation 
and not to be dazzled. 

To this great work Keats is said to have brought 
so deep and tender a spirit of humanity that the 
poem has all the sweet and warm interest of a 
village tale no less than the grandeur which befits 
so high a theme. Such, at least, is the perhaps 
partial representation of his friends ; for I have 
not read or heard even a single line of the per- 
formance in question. Keats, I am told, withholds 
it from the press, under an idea that the age has 
not enough of spiritual insight to receive it worthily, 
I do not like this distrust ; it makes me distrust 
the poet. The universe is waiting to respond to 
the highest word that the best child of time and 
immortality can utter. If it refuse to listen, it is 
because he mumbles and stammers, or discourses 
things unseasonable and foreign to the purpose. 

I visited the House of Lords the other day 
to hear Canning, who, you know, is now a peer^ 
with I forget what title. He disappointed me. 
Time blunts both point and edge, and does great 
mischief to men of his order of intellect. Then I 
stepped into the Lower House and listened to a 
few words from Cobbett, who looked as earthy as 
a real clodhopper, or rather as if he had lain a 



l66 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

dozen years beneath the clods. The men whom 
I meet nowadays often impress me thus ; probably 
because my spirits are not very good, and lead 
me to think much "about graves, with the long grass 
upon them, and weather-worn epitaphs, and dry 
bones of people who made noise enough in their 
day, but now can only clatter, clatter, clatter, 
when the sexton's spade disturbs them. Were it 
only possible to find out who are alive and who 
dead, it would contribute infinitely to my peace 
of mind. Every day of my life somebody comes 
and stares me in the face whom I have quietly 
blotted out of the tablet of living men, and trusted 
nevermore to be pestered with the sight or sound 
of him. For instance, going to Drury Lane 
Theatre a few evenings since, up rose before me, 
in the ghost of Hamlet's father, the bodily presence 
of the elder Kean, who did die, or ought to have 
died, in some drunken fit or other, so long ago 
that his fame is scarcely traditionary now. His 
powers are quite gone ; he was rather the ghost of 
himself than the ghost of the Danish king. 

In the stage-box sat several elderly and 
decrepit people, and among them a stately ruin of 
a woman on a very large scale, with a profile — 
for I did not see her front face — that stamped it- 
self into my brain as a seal impresses hot wax. 
By the tragic gesture with which she took a pinch 
of snuff, I was sure it must be Mrs. Siddons. 
Her brother, John Kemble, sat behind, — a broken- 
down figure, but still with a kingly majesty about 
liim. In lieu of all former achievements, Nature 
enables him to look* the part of Lear far better 



MOSSES FROM AN' OLD MANSE. 167 

than in the meridian of his genius. Charles Mat- 
thews was Ukewise there ; but a paralytic affection 
has distorted his once mobile countenance into a 
most disagreeable one-sidedness, from which he 
could no more wrench it into proper form than he 
could rearrange the face of the great globe itself. 
It looks as if, for the joke's sake, the poor man had 
twdsted his features into an exptession at once 
the most ludicrous and horrible that he could 
contrive, and at that very moment, as a judgment 
for making himself so hideous, an avenging 
Providence had seen fit to petrify him. Since it 
is out of his own powder, I would gladly assist him 
to change countenance, for his ugly visage haunts 
me both at noontide and night-time. Some other 
players of the past generation were present, 
but none that greatly interested me. It behooves 
actors, more than all others men of pubUcity, to 
vanish from the scene betimes. Being at best 
but painted shadows flickering on the wall and 
empty sounds tli^^Lecho another's thought, it is a 
sad disenchantment when the colors begin to fade 
and the voice to croak with age. 

What is there new in the literary w^ay on your 
side of the water ? Nothing of the kind has come 
under my inspection, except a volume of poems 
published above a year ago by Dr. Channing. . I 
did not before know that this eminent writer is a 
poet ; nor does the volume alluded to exhibit any 
of the characteristics of the author's mind as 
displayed in his prose works ; although some ot 
the poems have a richness that is not merely of 
the surface, but glows still the brighter the deeper 



l68 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

and more faithfully you look into them. They 
seem carelessly wrought, however, like those rings 
and ornaments of the very purest gold, but of 
rude, native manufacture, Vv^hich are found among 
the gold-dust from Africa. I doubt whether the 
American public will accept them ; it looks less 
to the assay of metal than to the neat and cunning 
manufacture. How slowly our literature grows 
up ! Most of our writers of promise have come 
to untimely ends. There was that wild fellow, 
John Neal, who almost turned my boyish brain 
with his romances; he surely has long been dead, 
else he never could keep himself so quiet. Bryant 
has gone to his last sleep, with the Thanatopsis 
gleaming over him like a sculptured marble sepul- 
chre by moonlight. Halleck, who used to write 
queer verses in the newspapers and published a 
Don Juanic poem called Fanny, is defunct as a 
poet, though averred to be exemplifying the 
metempsychosis as a man of business. Somewhat 
later there was Whittier, a fiery Quaker youth, to 
whom the muse had perversely assigned a battle- 
trumpet, and who got himself lynched, ten years 
agone, in South Carolina. I remember, too, a lad 
just from college, Longfellow by name, who scat- 
tered some delicate verses to the winds, and went 
to Germany, and perished, I think, of intense ap- 
plication, at the University of Gottingen. Willis 
— what a pity ! — was lost, if I recollect rightly, in 
1833, on his voyage to Europe, whither he was 
going to give us sketches of the world's sunny 
face. If these had lived, they might, one or all 
of them, have grown to be famous men. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 169 

And 3'et there is no telling : it may be as well 
that they have died. I was myself a young man 
of promise. O shattered brain, O broken spirit, 
where is the fulfilment of that promise ? The sad 
truth is, that, when fate would gently disappoint 
the world, it takes away the hopefulest mortals in 
their youth ; when it would laugh the world's hopes 
to scorn, it lets them live. Let me die upon this 
apothegm, for I shall never make a truer one. 

What a strange substance is the human brain ! 
Ortother, — for there is no need of generalizing 
the remark, — what an odd brain is mine ! Would 
you believe it t Daily and nightly there come 
scraps of poetry humming in my intellectual ear — 
some as airy as bird-notes, and some as delicately 
neat as parlor-music, and a few as grand as organ- 
peals — that seem just such verses as those de- 
parted poets would have written had not an in- 
exorable destiny snatched them from their ink- 
stands. They visit me in spirit, perhaps desiring 
to engage my services as the amanuensis of their 
posthumous productions, and thus secure the 
endless renown that they have forfeited by going 
hence too early. But I have my own business to 
attend to ; and besides, a medical gentleman, who 
interests himself in some little ailments of mine, 
advises me not to make too free use of pen and 
ink. There are clerks enough out of employment 
who would be glad of such a job. 

Good-bye ! Are you alive or dead ? and what 
are you about ? Still scribbling for the Demo- 
cratic ? And do those infernal compositors and 
proof-readers misprint your unfortunate produc- 



J70 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

tions as vilely as ever ? It is too bad. Let every 
man manufacture his own nonsense, say I. Ex- 
pect me home soon, and — to whisper you a secret 
— in company with the poet Campbell, who pur- 
poses to visit Wyoming and enjoy the shadow of 
the laurels that he planted there. Campbell is 
now an old man. He calls himself well, better 
than ever in his life, but looks strangely pale, and 
so shadow-like that one might almost poke a finger 
through his densest material. I tell him, by way 
of joke, that he is as dim and forlorn as Memory, 
though as unsubstantial as Hope. 

Your true friend, P. 

P. S. — Pray present my most respectful regards 
to our venerable and revered friend Mr. Brockden 
Brown. It gratifies me to learn that a complete 
edition of his works, in a double-columned octavo 
volume, is shortly to issue from the press at 
Philadelphia. Tell him that no American writer 
enjoys a more classic reputation on this side of 
the water. Is old Joel Barlow yet alive ? Uncon- 
scionable man ! Why, he must have nearly ful- 
filled his century. And does he meditate an epic 
on the war between Mexico and Texas with 
machinery contrived on the principle of the steam- 
engine, as being the nearest to celestial agency 
that our epoch can boast ? How can he expect 
ever to rise again, if, while just sinking into his 
grave, he persists in burdening himself with such 
a ponderosity of leaden verses ? 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 171 



EARTH'S HOLOCAUST. 

Once upon a time — but whether in the time 
past or time to come is a matter of little or no 
moment — this wide world had become so over- 
burdened with an accumulation of worn-out 
trumpery, that the inhabitants determined to rid 
themselves of it by a general bonfire. The site 
iixed upon at the representation of the insurance 
companies, and as being as central a spot as any 
other on the globe, was one of the broadest 
prairies of the West, where no human habitation 
would be endangered by the flames, and where a 
vast assemblage of spectators might commodi- 
ously admire the show. Having a taste for sights 
of this kind, and imagining, likewise, that the 
illumination of the bonhre might reveal some pro- 
fundity of moral truth heretofore hidden in mist 
or darkness, I made it convenient to journey 
thither and be present. At my arrival, although 
the heap of condemned rubbish was as yet com- 
paratively small, the torch had already been ap- 
plied. Amid that boundless plain, in the dusk 
of the evening, like a far-off star alone in the 
Armament, there was merely visible one tremu- 
lous gleam, whence none could have anticipated 
so fierce a blaze as was destined to ensue. With 
every moment, however, there came foot-travel- 



172 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

lers, women holding up their aprons, men on 
horseback, wheelbarrows, lumbering baggage- 
wagons, and other vehicles, great and small, and 
from far and near, laden with articles that were 
judged fit for nothing but to be burned. 

"" What materials have been used to kindle the 
flame ? '' inquired I of a bystander ; for I was de- 
sirous of knowing the whole process of the affair 
from beginning to end. 

The person whom I addressed was a grave 
man, fifty years old or thereabout, who had evi- 
dently come thither as a looker-on. He struck 
me immediately as having weighed for himself 
the true value of life and its circumstances, and 
therefore as feeling little personal interest in 
whatever judgment the world might form of 
them. Before answering my question, he looked 
me in the face by the kindling light of the fire. 

'' O, some very dry combustibles, '^ replied he, 
^* and extremely suitable to the purpose, — no 
other, in fact, than yesterday's newspapers, last 
month's magazines, and last year's withered 
leaves. Here now comes some antiquated trash 
that will take fire like a handful of shavings." 

As he spoke, some rough-looking men advanced 
to the verge of the bonfire, and threw in, as it 
appeared, all the rubbish of the herald's office, — 
the blazonry of coat armor, the crests and devices 
of illustrious families, pedigrees that extended 
back, like lines of light, into the mist of the dark 
ages, together with stars, garters, and embroid- 
ered collars, each of v/hich, as paltry a bawble 
as it might appear to the uninstructed eye, had 



MOSSES FROM AN' OLD MANSE. 



173 



once possessed vast significance, and was still, in 
truth, reckoned among the most precious of moral 
or material facts by the worshippers of the gor- 
geous past. Mingled with this confused heap, 
which was tossed into the flames by armfuls at 
once, were innumerable badges of knighthood, 
comprising those of all the European sovereign- 
ties, and Napoleon's decoration of the Legion of 
Honor, the ribbons of which were entangled with 
those of the ancient order of St. Louis. There, 
too, were the medals of our own Society of Cin- 
cinnati, by means of which, as history tells us, an 
order of hereditary knights came near being con- 
stituted out of the king-quellers of the Revolu- 
tion, And besides, there were the patents of no- 
bility of German counts and barons, Spanish 
grandees, and English peers, from the worm- 
eaten instruments signed by William the Con- 
queror down to the bran-new parchment of the 
latest lord who has received his honors from the 
fair hand of Victoria. 

At sight of the dense volumes of smoke, min- 
gled with vivid jets of flame, that gushed and 
eddied forth from this immense pile of earthly 
distinctions, the multitude of plebeian spectators 
set up a joyous shout, and clapped their hands 
with an emphasis that made the welkin echo. 
That was their moment of triumph, achieved, 
after long ages, over creatures of the same clay 
and the same spiritual infirmities, who had dared 
to assume the privileges due only to Heaven's 
better workmanship. But now there rushed 
towards the blazing heap a gray-haired man, of 



174 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

stately presence, wearing a coat, from the breast 
of which a star, or other badge of rank, seemed 
to have been forcibly wrenched away. He had 
not the tokens of intellectual power in his face ; 
but still there was the demeanor, the habitual and 
almost native dignity, of one who had been born 
to the idea of his own social superiority, and had 
never felt it questioned till that moment. 

" People," cried he, gazing at the ruin of what 
was dearest to his eyes with grief and wonder, 
but nevertheless with a degree of stateliness, — 
" people, what have you done ? This fire is con- 
suming all that marked your advance from bar- 
barism, or that could have prevented your relapse 
thither. We, the men of the privileged orders, 
were those who kept alive from age to age the 
old chivalrous spirit; the gentle and generous 
thought ; the higher, the purer, the more refined 
and delicate life. With the nobles, too, you cast 
off the poet, the painter, the sculptor, — all the 
beautiful arts ; for we were their patrons, and 
created the atmosphere in which they flourish. 
In abolishing, the majestic distinctions of rank, 
society loses not only its grace, but its steadfast- 
ness '' 

More he would doubtless have spoken ; but 
here there arose an outcry, sportive, contemptu- 
ous, and indignant, that altogether drowned the 
appeal of the fallen nobleman, insomuch that, 
casting one look of despair at his own half- 
burned pedigree, he shrunk back into the crowd, 
glad to shelter himself under his new-found in- 
significance. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 175 

" Let him thank his stars that we have not 
flung him into the same fire ! " shouted a rude 
figure, spurning the embers with his foot. " And 
henceforth let no man dare to show a piece of 
musty parchment as his warrant for lording it 
over his fellows. If he have strength of arm, 
well and good ; it is one species of superiority. 
If he have wit, wisdom, courage, force of charac- 
ter, let these attributes do for him what they may ; 
but from this day forward no mortal must hope 
for place and consideration by reckoning up the 
mouldy bones of his ancestors. That nonsense 
is done away." 

** And in good time,'^ remarked the grave ob- 
server by my side, in a low voice, however, " if 
no worse nonsense comes in its place ; but, at 
all events, this species of nonsense has fairly 
lived out its life." 

There was little space to muse or moralize over 
the embers of this time-honored rubbish ; for, be- 
fore it was half burned out, there came another 
multitude from beyond the sea, bearing the pur- 
ple robes of royalty, and the crowns, globes, and 
sceptres of emperors and kings. All these had 
been condemned as useless bawbles, playthings 
at best, fit only for the infancy of the world or 
rods to govern and chastise it in its nonage, but 
with which universal manhood at its full-grown 
stature could no longer brook to be insulted. 
Into such contempt had these regal insignia now 
fallen that the gilded crown and tinselled robes 
of the player king from Drury Lane Theatre had 
been thrown in among the rest, doubtless as a 



176 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

mockery of his brother monarchs on the great 
stage of the world. It was a strange sight to dis- 
cern the crown-jewels of England glowing and 
flashing in the midst of the fire. Some of them 
had been delivered down from the time of the 
Saxon princes ; others were purchased with vast 
revenues, or perchance ravished from the dead 
brows of the native potentates of Hindostan ; and 
the whole now blazed with a dazzling lustre, as 
if a star had fallen in that spot and been shat- 
tered into fragments. The splendor of the ruined 
monarchy had no reflection save in those ines- 
timable precious stones. But enough on this 
subject. It were but tedious to describe how the 
Emperor of Austria's mantle was converted to 
tinder, and how the posts and pillars of the 
French throne became a heap of coals, which it 
was impossible to distinguish from those of any 
other wood. Let me add, however, that I no- 
ticed one of the exiled Poles stirring up the bon- 
fire with the Czar of Russia's sceptre, which he 
afterwards flung into the flames. 

** The smell of singed garments is quite intol- 
erable here," observed my new acquaintance, as 
the breeze enveloped us in the smoke of a royal 
wardrobe. " Let us get to windward and see 
what they are doing on the other side of the bon- 
fire." 

We accordingly passed around, and were just 
in time to witness the arrival of a vast procession 
of Washingtonians, — as the votaries of temper- 
ance call themselves nowadays, — accompanied 
by thousands of the Irish disciples of Father 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 17; 

Mathew, with that great at apostle their head. 
They brought a rich contribution to the bonfire, 
being nothing less than all the hogsheads and bar- 
rels of liquor in the world, which they rolled before 
them across the prairie. 

** Now, my children," cried Father Mathew^ 
when they reached the verge of the fire, " one 
shove more, and the work is done. And now 
let us stand off and see Satan deal with his own 
liquor." 

Accordingly, having placed their wooden ves- 
sels within reach of the flames, the procession 
stood off at a safe distance, and soon beheld them 
burst into a blaze that reached the clouds and 
threatened to set the sky itself on fire. And well it 
might ; for here was the whole world's stock of 
spirituous liquors, which, instead of kindling a 
frenzied light in the eyes of individual topers as 
of yore, soared upwards with a bewildering gleam 
that startled all mankind. It was the aggregate 
of that fierce fire which would otherwise have 
scorched the hearts of millions. Meantime num- 
berless bottles of precious wine were flung into 
the blaze, which lapped up the contents as if it 
loved them, and grew, like other drunkards, the 
merrier and fiercer for what it quaffed. Never 
again will the insatiable thirst of the fire-fiend 
be so pampered. Here were the treasures of fa- 
mous bon vivants, — Hquors that had been tossed 
on ocean, and mellowed in the sun, and hoarded 
long in the recesses of the earth, — the pale, the 
gold, the ruddy juice of whatever vineyards were 
most delicate, — the entire vintage of Tokay, — all 
12 



178 MOSSES FROM A AT OLD MANSE. 

mingling in one stream with the vile fluids of the 
common pot-house, and contributing to heighten 
the self-same blaze. And while it rose in a gigan- 
tic spire that seemed to wave against the arch 
of the firmament and combine itself with the light 
of stars, the multitude gave a shout as if the broad . 
earth were exulting in its deliverance from the 
curse of ages. 

But the joy was not universal. Many deemed 
that human life would be gloomier than ever 
when that brief illumination should sink down. 
While the reformers were at work I overheard 
muttered expostulations from several respectable 
gentlemen with red noses and wearing gouty 
shoes ; and a ragged worthy, whose face looked 
like a hearth where the fire is burned out, now 
expressed his discontent more openly and boldly. 

*' What is this world good for,'' said the last 
toper, **now that we can never be jolly any 
more? What is to comfort the poor man in 
sorrow and perplexity ? How is he to keep his 
heart warm against the cold winds of this cheer- 
less earth ? And what do you propose to give 
him in exchange for the solace that you take 
away ? How are old friends to sit together by 
the fireside without a cheerful glass between 
them t A plague upon your reformation ! It is 
a sad world, a cold world, a selfish world, a low 
world, not worth an honest fellow's living in, now 
that good fellowship is gone forever ! " 

This harangue excited great mirth among the 
bystanders ; but, preposterous as was the senti- 
ment, I could not help commiserating the forlorn 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 17^ 

condition of the last toper, whose boon companions 
had dwindled away from his side, leaving the 
poor fellow without a soul to countenance him in 
sipping his liquor, nor indeed any liquor to sip. 
Not that this was quite the true state of the case \ 
for I had observed him at a critical moment filch 
a bottle of fourth-proof brandy that fell beside the 
bonfire and hide it in his pocket. 

The spirituous and fermented liquors being 
thus disposed of, the zeal of the reformers next 
induced them to replenish the fire with all the 
boxes of tea and bags of coffee in the w^orld. 
And now came the planters of Virginia, bringing, 
their crops of tobacco. These, being cast upon 
the heap of inutility, aggregated it to the size of a 
mountain, and incensed the atmosphere with such 
potent fragrance that methought we should never 
draw pure breath again. The present sacrifice 
seemed to startle the lovers of the weed more 
than any that they had hitherto witnessed. 

*' Well, they Ve put my pipe out," said an old 
gentleman, flinging it into the flames in a pet. 
" What is this world coming to ? Everything rich 
and racy — all the spice of life — is to be con- 
demned as useless. Now that they have kindled 
the bonfire, if these nonsensical reformers would 
fling themselves into it, all would be well 
enough ! " 

'' Be patient,'' responded a stanch conserva- 
tive ; *' it will come to that in the end. They 
will first fling us in, and finally themselves.'' 

From the general and systematic measures of 
reform I now turn to consider the individual con- 



l8o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

tributions to this memorable bonfire. In many 
instances these were of a very amusing character. 
One poor fellow threw in his empty purse, and 
another a bundle of counterfeit or insolvable bank- 
notes. Fashionable ladies threw in their last 
season's bonnets, together with heaps of ribbons, 
yellow lace, and much other half-worn milliner's 
ware, all of which proved even more evanescent 
in the fire than it had been in the fashion. A 
multitude of lovers of both sexes — discarded 
maids or bachelors and couples mutually weary 
of one another — tossed in bundles of perfumed 
letters and enamored sonnets. A hack politician, 
being deprived of bread by the loss of ofiice, 
threw in his teeth, which happened to be false 
ones. The Rev. Sydney Smith — having voyaged 
across the Atlantic for that sole purpose — came 
up to the bonfire with a bitter grin and threw in 
certain repudiated bonds, fortified though they 
were with the broad seal of a sovereign state. A 
little boy of five years old, in the premature man- 
liness of the present epoch, threw in his play- 
things ; a college graduate, his diploma ; an 
apothecary, ruined by the spread of homoeopathy, 
his whole stock of drugs and medicines ; a phy- 
sician, his library ; a parson, his old sermons ; 
and a fine gentleman of the old school, his code 
of manners, which he had formerly written down 
for the benefit of the next generation. A widow, 
resolving on a second marriage, slyly threw in her 
dead husband's miniature. A young man, jilted 
by his mistress, w^ould willingly have flung his 
own desperate heart into the flames, but could 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. i8l 

find no means to wrench it out of his bosom. 
An American author, whose works were neglected 
by the public, threw his pen and paper into the 
bonfire and betook himself to some less discour- 
aging occupation. It somewhat startled me to 
overhear a number of ladies, highly respectable 
in appearance, proposing to fling their gowns and 
petticoats into the flames, and assume the garb, 
together with the manners, duties, offices, and 
responsibilities, of the opposite sex. 

What favor was accorded to this scheme I am 
unable to say, my attention being suddenly drawn 
to a poor, deceived, and half-delirious girl, who, 
exclaiming that she was the most worthless thing 
alive or dead, attempted to cast herself into the 
fire amid all that wrecked and broken trumpery of 
the world. A good man, however, ran to her 
rescue. 

" Patience, my poor girl ! '^ said he, as he drew 
her back from the fierce embrace of the destroy- 
ing angel. '^ Be patient, and abide Heaven's will. 
So long as you possess a living soul, all may be 
restored to its first freshness. These things of 
matter and creations of human fantasy are fit for 
nothing but to be burned when once they have 
had their day ; but your day is eternity ! '' 

" Yes," said the wretched girl, whose frenzy 
seemed now to have sunk down into deep de- 
spondency, — "yes, and the sunshine is blotted 
out of it ? " 

It was now rumored among the spectators that 
all the weapons and munitions of war were to be 
thrown into the bonfire with the exception of the 



i82 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

world's stock of gunpowder, which, as the safest 
mode of disposing of it, had already been drowned 
in the sea. This intelligence seemed to awaken 
great diversity of opinion. The hopeful philan- 
thropist esteemed it a token that the millennium 
was already come; while persons of another 
stamp, in whose view mankind was a breed of 
bulldogs, prophesied that all the old stoutness, 
fervor, nobleness, generosity, and magnanimity of 
the race would disappear, — these qualities, as 
they affirmed, requiring blood for their nourish- 
ment. They comforted themselves, however, in 
the belief that the proposed abolition of war was 
impracticable for any length of time together. 

Be that as it might, numberless great guns, 
whose thunder had long been the voice of battle, 
— the artillery of the Armada, the battering trains 
of Marlborough, and the adverse cannon of- 
Napoleon and Wellington, — were trundled into 
the midst of the fire. By the continual addition 
of dry combustibles, it had now waxed so intense 
that neither brass nor iron could withstand it. It 
was wonderful to behold how these terrible in- 
struments of slaughter melted away like play- 
things of wax. Then the armies of the earth 
wheeled around the mighty furnace, with their 
military music playing triumphant marches, and 
flung in their muskets and swords. The standard- 
bearers, likewise, cast one look upward at their 
banners, all tattered with shot-holes and inscribed 
with the names of victorious fields ; and, giving 
them a last flourish on the breeze, they lowered 
them into the flame, which snatched them up 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MAUSE. 183 

ward in its rush towards the clouds. This 
ceremony being over, the world was left without 
a single weapon in its hands, except possibly a 
few old king's arms and rusty swords and other 
trophies of the Revolution in some of our State 
armories. And now the drums were beaten and 
the trumpets brayed all together, as a prelude to 
the proclamation of universal and eternal peace 
and the announcement that glory w^as no longer to 
be won by blood, but that it would henceforth be 
the contention of the human race to work out the 
greatest mutual good, and that beneficence, in 
the future annals of the earth, would claim the 
praise of valor. The blessed tidings were accord- 
ingly promulgated, and caused infinite rejoicings 
among those who had stood aghast at the horror 
and absurdity of war. 

But I saw a grim smile pass over the seared 
V'.sage of a stately old commander, — by his 
war-worn figure and rich military dress, he might 
have been one of Napoleon's famous marshals, 
— who, with the rest of the w^orld's soldiery, had 
just flung av/ay the sword that had been familiar 
to his right hand for half a century. 

" Ay ! ay ! " grumbled he. " Let them proclaim 
what they please ; but, in the end, we shall find 
that all this foolery has only made more work for 
the armorers and cannon-founders." 

" Why, sir," exclaimed I, in astonishment, " do 
you imagine that the human race will ever so far 
return on the steps of its past madness as to weld 
another sword or cast another cannon ? " 

*^ There will be no need," observed, with a 



1 84 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

sneer, one who neither felt benevolence nor had 
faith in it. " When Cain wished to slay his 
brother, he was at no loss for a weapon/' 

"We shall see," replied the veteran com- 
mander. " If I am mistaken, so much the better; 
but in my opinion, without pretending to phi- 
losophize about the matter, the necessity of war 
lies far deeper than these honest gentlemen 
suppose. What ! is there a field for all the petty 
disputes of individuals 1 and shall there be no 
great law court for the settlement of national 
difficulties ? The battle-field is the only court 
where such suits can be tried/' 

"You forget, general," rejoined I, "that, in 
this advanced stage of civilization. Reason and 
Philanthropy combined will constitute just such 
a tribunal as is requisite." 

" Ah, I had forgotten that, indeed ! " said the 
old warrior, as he limped away. 

The fire was now to be replenished with 
materials that had hitherto been considered of 
even greater importance to the well-being of 
society than the warlike munitions which we had 
already seen consumed. A body of reformers 
had travelled all over the earth in quest of the 
machinery by which the different nations were 
accustomed to inflict the punishment of death. 
A shudder passed through the multitude as these 
ghastly emblems were dragged forward. Even 
the flames seemed at first to shrink away, dis- 
playing the shape and murderous contrivance of 
each in a full blaze of light, which of itself was 
sufficient to convince mankind of the long and 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 185 

deadly error of human law. Those old imple- 
ments of cruelty ; those horrible monsters of 
mechanism ; those inventions which it seemed 
to demand something worse than man^s natural 
heart to contrive, and which had lurked in the 
dusky nooks of ancient prisons, the subject of 
terror-stricken legend, — were now brought forth to 
view. Headsmen's axes, with the rust of noble 
and royal blood upon them, and a vast collection 
of halters that had choked the breath of plebeian 
victims, were thrown in together. A shout 
greeted the arrival of the guillotine, w^hich was 
thrust forward on the same wheels that had borne 
it from one to another of the blood-stained streets 
of Paris. But the loudest roar of applause went 
up, telling the distant sky of the triumph of the 
earth's redemption, when the gallows made its 
appearance. An ill-looking fellow, however, 
rushed forward, and, putting himself in the path 
of the reformers, bellowed hoarsely, and fought 
with brute fury to stay their progress. 

It was little matter of surprise, perhaps, that 
the executioner should thus do his best to 
vindicate and uphold the machinery by which 
he himself had his livelihood and worthier indi- 
viduals their death ; but it deserved special note 
that men of a far different sphere — even of that 
consecrated class in whose guardianship the 
world is apt to trust its benevolence — were found 
to take the hangman's view of the question. 

" Stay, my brethren ! " cried one of them. 
** You are misled by a false philanthropy ; you 
know not what you do. The gallows is a Heaven* 



1 86 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

ordained instrument. Bear it back, then, rever- 
ently, and set it up in its old place, else the 
world will fall to speedy ruin and desolation ! '^ 

** Onward ! onward ! '^ shouted a leader in the 
reform. " Into the flames with the accursed 
instrument of man's bloody policy ! How can 
human law inculcate benevolence -and love while 
it persists in setting up the gallows as its chief 
symbol ? One heave more, good friends, and the 
world will be redeemed from its greatest error." 

A thousand hands, that nevertheless loathed 
the touch, now lent their assistance, and thrust 
the ominous burden far, far into the centre of the 
raging furnace. There its fatal and abhorred 
image was beheld, first black, then a red coal, 
then ashes. 

"■ That was well done ! " exclaimed I. 

" Yes, it was well done," replied, but with less 
enthusiasm than I expected, the thoughtful ob- 
server, who was still at my side, — '' well done, if 
the world be good enough for the measure. 
Death, however, is an idea that cannot easily be 
dispensed with in any condition between the 
primal innocence and that other purity and per- 
fection which perchance we are destined to attain 
after travelling round the full circle ; but, at all 
events, it is well that the experiment should now 
be tried." 

"' Too cold ! too cold ! " impatiently exclaitned 
the young and ardent leader in this triumph. 
" Let the heart have its voice here as well as the 
intellect. And as for ripeness, and as for prog- 
ress, let mankind always do the highest, kind- 



MOSSES FROM AA^ OLD MANSE. 187 

est, noblest thing that, at any given period, it has 
attained the perception of ; and surely that thing 
cannot be wrong nor wrongly timed." 

I know not whether it were the excitement of 
the scene, or whether the good people around the 
bonfire were really growing more enlightened 
every instant ; but they now proceeded to meas- 
ures in the full length of which I was hardly pre- 
pared to keep them company. For instance, 
some threw their marriage certificates into the 
flames, and declared themselves candidates for a 
higher, holier, and more comprehensive union 
than that which had subsisted from the birth of 
time under the form of the connubial tie. Others 
hastened to the vaults of banks and to the coffers 
of the rich — all of which were opened to the first 
comer on this fated occasion — and brought entire 
bales of paper-mpney to enliven the blaze, and 
tons of coin to be melted down by its intensity. 
Henceforth, they said, universal benevolence, 
uncoined and exhaustles's, was to be the golden 
currency of the world. At this intelligence the 
bankers and speculators in the stocks grew pale, 
and a pickpocket, who had reaped a rich harvest 
among the crowd, fell down in a deadly fainting 
fit. A few men of business burned their day- 
books and ledgers, the notes and obligations of 
their creditors, and all other evidences of debts 
due to themselves ; while perhaps a somewhat 
larger number satisfied their zeal for reform with 
the sacrifice of any uncomfortable recollection of 
their own indebtment. There was then a cry 
that the period was arrived when the title-deeds 



l88 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

of landed property should be given to the flames, 
and the whole soil of the earth revert to the pub- 
lic, from whom it had been wrongfully abstracted 
and most unequally distributed among individ- 
uals. Another party demanded that all written 
constitutions, set forms of government, legisla- 
tive acts, statute-books, and everything else on 
which human invention had endeavored to stamp 
its arbitrary laws, should at once be destroyed, 
leaving the consummated world as free as the 
man first created. 

Whether any ultimate action was taken with 
regard to these propositions is beyond my 
knowledge ; for, just then, some matters were in 
progress that concerned my sympathies more 
nearly. 

" See ! see ! What heaps of books and pam- 
phlets ! '' cried a fellow, who did not seem to be 
a lover of literature. " Now we shall have a 
glorious blaze ! '' 

" That 's just the. thing ! " said a modern 
philosopher. " Now we shall get rid of the 
weight of dead men's thought, which has hitherto 
pressed so heavily on the living intellect that it 
has been incompetent to any effectual self-exer- 
tion. Well done, my lads ! Into the fire with 
them ! Now you are enlightening the world 
indeed ! " 

^' But what is to become of the trade .^ '' cried a 
frantic bookseller. 

" O, by all means, let them accompany their 
merchandise," coolly observed an author. " It 
will be a noble funeral-pile ! " 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 189 

The truth was, that the human race had now 
reached a stage of progress so far beyond what 
the wisest and wittiest men of former ages had 
ever dreamed of, that it would have been a mani- 
fest absurdity to allow the earth to be any longer 
encumbered with their poor achievements in the 
literary line. Accordingly a thorough and search- 
ing investigation had swept the booksellers' shops, 
hawkers' stands, public and private libraries, and 
even the little book-shelf by the country fireside, 
and had brought the world's entire mass of 
printed paper, bound or in sheets, to swell the 
already mountain bulk of our illustrious bonfire. 
Thick, heavy folios, containing the labors of lexi- 
cographers, commentators, and encyclopedists, 
were flung in, and, falling among the embers 
with a leaden thump, smouldered away to ashes 
like rotten wood. The small, richly gilt French 
tomes of the last age, with the hundred volumes 
of Voltaire among them, went off in a brilliant 
shower of sparkles and little jets of flame ; while 
the current literature of the same nation burned 
red and blue, and threw an infernal light over the 
visages of the spectators, converting them all to 
the aspect of party-colored fiends. A collection 
of German stories emitted a scent of brimstone. 
The English standard authors made excellent 
fuel, generally exhibiting the properties of sound 
oak logs. Milton's works, in particular, sent up 
a powerful blaze, gradually reddening into a coal, 
which promised to endure longer than almost any 
other material of the pile. From Shakespeare 
there gushed a flame of such marvellous splendor 



190 MOSSES FROM A IV OLD MANSE. 

that men shaded their eyes as against the sun's 
meridian glory ; nor even when the works of his 
ow^n elucidators were flung upon him did he 
cease to flash forth a dazzling radiance from be- 
neath the ponderous heap. It is my belief that 
he is still blazing as fervidly as ever. 

** Could a poet but light a lamp at that glorious 
flame,'' remarked I, " he might then consume the 
midnight oil to some good purpose." 

'' That is the very thing which modern poets 
have been too apt to do, or at least to attempt," 
answered a critic. " The chief benefit to be 
expected from this conflagration of past literature 
undoubtedly is, that writers will henceforth be 
compelled to light their lamps at the sun or stars." 

"If they can reach so high," said I; *' but 
that task requires a giant, who may afterwards 
distribute the light among inferior men. It is not 
every one that can steal the fire from heaven like 
Prometheus ; but, when once he had done the 
d^eed, a thousand hearths were kindled by it." 

It amazed me much to observe how indefinite 
was the proportion between the physical mass of 
any given author and the property of brilliant and 
long-continued combustion. For instance, there 
was not a quarto volume of the last century — nor, 
indeed, of the present — that could compete in 
that particular with a child's little gilt-covered 
book, containing Mother Goose's Melodies. The 
Life and Death of Tom Thumb outlasted the 
biography of Marlborough. An epic, indeed a 
dozen of them, was converted to white ashes be- 
fore the single sheet of an old ballad was half 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 191 

consumed. In more than one case, too, when 
volumes of applauded verse proved incapable of 
anything better than a stifling smoke, an unre- 
garded ditty of some nameless bard — perchance 
in the corner of a newspaper — soared up among 
the stars with a flame as brilliant as their own. 
Speaking of the properties of flame, methought 
Shelley's poetry emitted a purer light than almost 
any other productions of his day, contrasting 
beautifully with the fitful and lurid gleams and 
gushes of black vapor that flashed and eddied 
from the volumes of Lord Byron. As for Tom 
Moore, some of his songs diffused an odor like a 
burning pastil. 

I felt particular interest in watching the com- 
bustion of American authors, and scrupulously 
noted by my watch the precise number of mo- 
ments that changed most of them from shabbily 
printed books to 'indistinguishable ashes. It 
would be invidious, however, if not perilous, to 
betray these awful secrets ; so that I shall con- 
tent myself with observing that it was not invari- 
ably the writer most frequent in the public mouth 
that made the most splendid appearance in the 
bonfire. I especially remember that a great deal 
of excellent inflammability was exhibited in a 
thin volume of poems by Ellery Channing; al- 
though, to speak the truth, there were certain 
portions that hissed and spluttered in a very 
disagreeable fashion. A curious phenomenon 
occurred in reference to several writers, native as 
well as foreign. Their books, though of highly 
respectable figure, instead of bursting into a 



192 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

blaze or even smouldering out their substance in 
smoke, suddenly melted away in a manner that 
proved them to be ice. 

If it be no lack of modesty to mention my own 
works, it must here be confessed that I looked 
for them with fatherly interest, but in vain. Too 
probably they were changed to vapor by the first 
action of the heat ; at best, I can only hope that, 
in their quiet way, they contributed a glimmering 
spark or two to the splendor of the evening. 

"Alas ! and woe is me ! '' thus bemoaned him- 
self a heavy-looking gentleman in green spec- 
tacles. " The world is utterly ruined, and there 
is nothing to live for any longer. The business 
of my life is snatched from me. Not a volume 
to be had for love or money ! " 

" This,'' remarked the sedate observer beside 
me, " is a bookworm, — one of those men who are 
born to gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you 
see, are covered with the dust of libraries. He 
has no inward fountain of ideas ; and, in good 
earnest, now that the old stock is abolished, I do 
not see what is to become of the poor fellow. 
Have you no word of comfort for him } " 

'' My dear sir," said I to the desperate book- 
worm, " is not nature better than a book ? Is not 
the human heart deeper than any system of phi- 
losophy ? Is not life replete with more instruction 
than past observers have found it possible to 
write down in maxims } Be of good cheer. The 
great book of Time is still spread wide open be- 
fore us ; and, if we read it aright, it will be to us 
a volume of eternal truth.'' 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 193 

" O, my books, my books, my precious printed 
books ! " reiterated the forlorn bookworm. " My 
only reality was a bound volume ; and now they 
will not leave me even a shadowy pamphlet ! " 

In fact, the last remnant of the literature of all 
the ages was now descending upon the blazing 
heap in the shape of a cloud of pamphlets from 
the press of the New World. These likewise 
were consumed in the twinkling of an eye, leav- 
ing the earth, for the first time since the days of 
Cadmus, free from the plague of letters, — an en- 
viable field for the authors of the next generation. 

" Well, and does anything remain to be done ? '' 
inquired I, somewhat anxiously. " Unless we 
set fire to the earth itself, and then leap boldly 
ofE into infinite space, I know not that we can 
carry reform to any farther point." 

" You are vastly mistaken, my good friend,'^ 
said the observer. " Believe me, the fire will not 
be allow^ed to settle down without the addition of 
fuel that will startle many persons who have lent 
a willing hand thus far." 

Nevertheless there appeared to be a relaxation 
of effort for a little time, during which, probably^ 
the leaders of the movement were considering 
what should be done next. In the interval, a 
philosopher threw his theory into the flames, — a 
sacrifice which, by those who knew how to esti- 
mate it, was pronounced the most remarkable 
that had yet been made. The combustion, how- 
ever, was by no means brilliant. Some indefati- 
gable people, scorning to take a moment's ease^ 
now employed themselves in collecting all the 

13 



194 MOSSES FROM AA^ OLD MANSE. 

withered leaves and fallen boughs of the forest, 
and thereby recruited the bonfire to a greater 
height than ever. But this was mere by-play. 

" Here comes the fresh fuel that I spoke of,'* 
said my companion. 

To my astonishment the persons who now ad- 
vanced into the vacant space around the mount- 
ain fire bore surplices and other priestly gar- 
ments, mitres, crosiers, and a confusion of Popish 
and Protestant emblems with which it seemed 
their purpose to consummate the great act of faith. 
Crosses from the spires of old cathedrals were 
cast upon the heap with as little remorse as if the 
reverence of centuries passing in long array be- 
neath the lofty towers had not looked up to them 
as the holiest of symbols. The font in which in- 
fants were consecrated to God, the sacramental 
vessels whence piety received the hallowed 
draught, were given to the same destruction. 
Perhaps it most nearly touched my heart to see 
among these devoted relics fragments of the 
humble communion-tables and undecorated pul- 
pits which I recognized as having been torn from 
the meeting-houses of New England. Those 
simple edifices might have been permitted to re- 
tain all of sacred embellishment that their Puri- 
tan founders had bestowed, even though the 
mighty structure of St. Peter's had sent its spoils 
to the fire of this terrible sacrifice. Yet I felt 
that these were but the externals of religion, and 
might most safely be relinquished by spirits that 
best knew their deep significance. 

"All is well/' said I, cheerfully. " The wood- 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 195 

paths shall be the aisles of our cathedral, the 
firmament itself shall be its ceiling. What 
needs an earthly roof between the Deity and his 
worshippers ? Our faith can well afford to lose 
all the drapery that even the holiest men have 
thrown around it, and be only the more sublime 
in its simplicity." 

'' True,'' said my companion ; *^ but wdll they 
pause here 1 " 

The doubt implied in his question was well 
founded. In the general destruction of books 
already described, a holy volume, that stood 
apart from the catalogue of human literature, 
and yet, in one sense, was at its head, had been 
spared. But the Titan of innovation, — angel or 
fiend, double in his nature, and capable of deeds 
befitting both characters, — at first shaking down 
only the old and rotten shapes of things, had 
now, as it appeared, laid his terrible hand upon 
the main pillars which supported the whole edi- 
fice of our moral and spiritual state. The inhab- 
itants of the earth had grown too enlightened to 
define their faith within a form of words, or to 
limit the spiritual by any analogy to our material 
existence. Truths which the heavens trembled 
at were now but a fable of the world's infancy. 
Therefore, as the final sacrifice of human error^ 
what else remained to be thrown upon the 
embers of that awful pile, except the book which, 
though a celestial revelation to past ages, was 
but a voice from a lower sphere as regarded the 
present race of man ? It was done ! Upon the 
blazing heap of falsehood and worn-out truth— ^ 



196 MOSSES FROM A AT OLD MANSE. 

things that the earth had never needed, or had 
ceased to need, or had grown childishly weary of 
— fell the ponderous church Bible, the great old 
volume that had lain so long on the cushion of 
the pulpit, and whence the pastor's solemn voice 
had given holy utterance on so many a Sabbath 
day. There, likewise, fell the family Bible, which 
the long-buried patriarch had read to his children, 
— in prosperity or sorrow, by the fireside and in 
the summer shade of trees, — and had be- 
queathed downward as the heirloom of genera- 
tions. There fell the bosom Bible, the little vol- 
ume that had been the soul's friend of some 
sorely tried child of dust, who thence took 
courage, whether his trial were for life or death, 
steadfastly confronting both in the strong assur- 
ance of immortality. 

All these were flung into the fierce and riotous 
blaze ; and then a mighty wind came roaring 
across the plain with a desolate howl, as if it 
were the angry lamentation of the earth for the 
loss of heaven's sunshine; and it shook the 
gigantic pyramid of flame and scattered the 
cinders of half-consumed abominations around 
upon the spectators. 

" This is terrible ! " said I, feeling that my 
cheek grew pale, and seeing a like change in the 
visages about me. 

" Be of good courage yet," answered the man 
with whom I had so often spoken. He continued 
to gaze steadily at the spectacle with a singular 
calmness, as if it concerned him merely as an 
observer. " Be of good courage, nor yet exult 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 197 

too much ; for there is far less both of good and 
evil in the effect of this bonfire than the world 
might be willing to believe." 

" How can that be ? " exclaimed I, impatiently. 
" Has it not consumed everything ? Has it not 
swallowed up or melted down every human or 
divine appendage of our mortal state that had 
substance enough to be acted on by fire ? Will 
there be anything left us to-morrow morning 
better or worse than a heap of embers and 
ashes ? '*' 

" Assuredly there will," said my grave friend. 
" Come hither to-morrow morning, or whenever 
the combustible portion of the pile shall be quite 
burned out, and you will find among the ashes 
everything really valuable that you have seen 
cast into the flames. Trust me, the world of to- 
morrow will again enrich itself with the gold and 
diamonds which have been cast off by the world 
of to-day. Not a truth is destroyed nor buried 
so deep among the ashes but it will be raked up 
at last." 

This was a strange assurance. Yet I felt in- 
clined to credit it, the more especially as I be- 
held among the wallowing flames a copy of the 
Holy Scriptures, the pages of which, instead of 
being blackened into tinder, only assumed a more 
dazzling whiteness as the finger-marks of human 
imperfection were purified away. Certain mar- 
ginal notes and commentaries, it is true, yielded 
to the intensity of the fiery test, but without de- 
triment to the smallest syllable that had flamed 
from the pc n of inspiration. 



198 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

" Yes ; there is the proof of what you say," 
answered I, turning to the observer; *' but if 
only what is evil can feel the action of the fire, 
then, surely, the conflagration has been of in- 
estimable utility. Yet, if I understand aright, 
you intimate a doubt whether the world's expec- 
tation of benefit would be realized by it.'' 

" Listen to the talk of these worthies," said he, 
pointing to a group in front of the blazing pile ; 
^' possibly they may teach you something useful, 
without intending it." 

The persons whom he indicated consisted of 
that brutal and most earthy figure who had stood 
forth so furiously in defence of the gallows, — the 
hangman, in short, — together with the last thief 
and the last murderer, all three of whom were 
clustered about the last toper. The latter was 
liberally passing the brandy-bottle, which he had 
rescued from the general destruction of wines 
and spirits. This little convivial party seemed 
at the lowest pitch of despondency, as consider- 
ing that the purified world must needs be utterly 
unlike the sphere that they had hitherto known, 
and therefore but a strange and desolate abode 
for gentlemen of their kidney. 

'' The best counsel for all of us is," remarked 
the hangman, " that, as soon as we have finished 
the last drop of liquor, I help you, my three 
friends, to a comfortable end upon the nearest 
tree, and then hang myself on the same bough. 
This is no world for us any longer." 

" Poh, poh, my good fellows ! " said a dark- 
complexioned personage, who now joined the 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 199 

group, — his complexion was indeed fearfully dark^ 
and his eyes glowed with a redder light than thai" 
of the bonfire ; " be not so cast down, my dear 
friends ; you shall see good days yet. There is 
one thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to 
throw into the fire, and without which all the 
rest of the conflagration is just nothing at all ; 
yes, though they had burned the earth itself to a 
cinder." 

" And what may that be ? '^ eagerly demanded 
the last murderer. 

" What but the human heart itself ? " said the- 
dark-visaged stranger, with a portentous grin. 
'' And, unless they hit upon some method of 
purifying that foul cavern, forth from it will re- 
issue all the shapes of wrong and misery — the 
same old shapes or worse ones — which they have 
taken such a vast deal of trouble to consume to 
ashes. I have stood by this livelong night and 
laughed in my sleeve at the whole business. 
O, take my word for it, it will be the old world 
yet ! " 

This brief conversation supplied me with a 
theme for lengthened thought. How sad a truth, 
if true it were, that man's age-long endeavor for 
perfection had served only to render him the 
mockery of the evil principle, from the fatal cir- 
cumstance of an error at the very root of the 
matter ! The heart, the heart, — there was the 
little yet boundless sphere wherein existed the 
original wrong of which the crime and misery 
of this outward world were merely types. Purify 
that inward sphere, and the many shapes of evil 



200 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

that haunt the outward, and which now seem 
almost our only realities, will turn to shadowy 
phantoms and vanish of their own accord ; but 
if we go no deeper than the intellect, and strive, 
with merely that feeble instrument, to discern and 
rectify what is wrong, our whole accomplishment 
will be a dream, so unsubstantial that it matters 
little whether the bonfire, which I have so faith- 
fully described, were what we choose to call a 
real event and a flame that would scorch the 
finger, or only a phosphoric radiance and a par- 
able of my own brain. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 20l 



PASSAGES FROM A RELINQUISHED 
WOilK. 

AT HOME. 

From infancy I was under the guardianship of 
a village parson, who made me the subject of 
daily prayer and the sufferer of innumerable 
stripes, using no distinction, as to these marks of 
paternal love, between myself and his own three 
boys. The result, it must be owned, has been 
very different in their cases and mine, they being 
all respectable nien and weH settled in life ; the 
eldest as the successor to his father's pulpit, the 
second as a physician, and the third as a partner 
in a wholesale shoe-store ; while I, with better 
prospects than either of them, have run the 
course which this volume will describe. Yet 
there is room for doubt whether I should have 
been any better contented with such success as 
theirs than with my own misfortunes, — at least, 
till after my experience of the latter had made it 
too late for another trial. 

My guardian had a name of considerable emi- 
nence, and fitter for the place it occupies in ec- 
clesiastical history than for so frivolous a page as 
mine. In his own vicinity, among the lighter 
part of his hearers, he was called Parson Thump- 



2 02 MOSSES FROM AN- OLD MANSE. 

cushion, from the very forcible gestures with 
which he illustrated his doctrines. Certainly, if 
his powers as a preacher were to be estimated by 
the damage done to his pulpit-furniture, none of 
his living brethren, and but few dead ones, would 
have been worthy even to pronounce a benedic- 
tion after him. Such pounding and expounding 
the moment he began to grow warm, such slap- 
ping with his open palm, thumping wdth his 
closed fist, and banging with the whole weight of 
the great Bible, convinced me that he held, in 
imagination, either the Old Nick or some Unita- 
rian infidel at bay, and belabored his unhappy 
cushion as proxy for those abominable adversa- 
ries. Nothing but this exercise of the body 
while delivering his sermons could have sup- 
ported the good parson's health under the men- 
tal toil which they cost him in composition. 

Though Parson Thumpcushion had an upright 
heart, and some called it a warm one, he was in- 
variably stern and severe, on principle, I sup- 
pose, to me. With late justice, though early 
enough, even now, to be tinctured with gener- 
osity, I acknowledge him to have been a good 
and wise man after his own fashion. If his 
management failed as to myself, it succeeded 
with his three sons ; nor, I must frankly say, 
could any mode of education with which it was 
possible for him to be acquainted have made me 
much better than what I was or led me to a 
happier fortune than the present. He could nei- 
ther change the nature that God gave me nor 
adapt his own inflexible mind to my peculiar 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 203 

character. Perhaps it was my chief misfortune 
that I had neither father nor mother alive ; for 
parents have an instinctive sagacity in regard to 
the welfare of their children, and the child feels 
a confidence both in the wisdom and affection of 
his parents which he cannot transfer to any dele- 
gate of their duties, however conscientious. An 
orphan's fate is hard, be he rich or poor. As for 
Parson Thumpcushion, whenever I see the old 
gentleman in my dreams he looks kindly and 
sorrowfully at me, holding out his hand as if 
each had something to forgive. With such kind- 
ness and such forgiveness, but without the sorrow, 
may our next meeting be ! 

I was a youth of gay and happy temperament, 
with an incorrigible levity of spirit, of no vicious 
propensities, sensible enough, but wayward and 
fanciful. What- a character was this to be 
brought in contact with the stern old Pilgrim 
spirit of my guardian ! We were at variance on 
a thousand points ; but our chief and final dis- 
pute arose from the pertinacity with which he in- 
sisted on my adopting a particular profession ; 
while I, being heir to a moderate competence, 
had avowed my purpose of keeping aloof from 
the regular business of Ufe. This would have 
been a dangerous resolution anywhere in the 
world ; it was fatal in New England. There is a 
grossness in the conceptions of my countrymen ; 
they will not be convinced that any good thing 
may consist with what they call idleness ; they 
can anticipate nothing but evil of a young man 
who neither studies physic, law, nor gospel, 



204 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

nor opens a store, nor takes to farming, but 
manifests an incomprehensible disposition to 
be satisfied with what his father left him. The 
principle is excellent in its general influence, but 
most miserable in its effect on the few that vio- 
late it. I had a quick sensitiveness to public 
opinion, and felt as if it ranked me with the tav- 
ern haunters and town paupers, — with the drunken 
poet who hawked his own Fourth of July odes, 
and the broken soldier who had been good for 
nothing since last war. The consequence of all 
this was a piece of light-hearted desperation. 

I do not over-estimate my notoriety when I 
take it for granted that many of my readers must 
have heard of me in the wild way of life which I 
adopted. The idea of becoming a wandering 
story-teller had been suggested, a year or two be- 
fore, by an encounter with several merry vaga« 
bonds in a showman's wagon, where they and I 
had sheltered ourselves during a summer shower. 
The project was not more extravagant than most 
which a young man forms. Stranger ones are 
executed every day; and, not to mention my 
prototypes in the East, and the wandering ora- 
tors and poets whom my own ears have heard, I 
had the example of one illustrious itinerant in the 
other hemisphere, — of Goldsmith, who planned 
and performed his travels through France and 
Italy on a less promising scheme than mine. I 
took credit to myself for various qualifications, 
mental and personal, suited to the undertaking. 
Besides, my mind had latterly tormented me for 
employment, keeping up an irregular activity even 



MOSSES FROM AN' OLD MANSE. 205 

in sleep, and making me conscious that I must 
toil, if it were but in catching butterflies. But 
my chief motives were, discontent with home and 
a bitter grudge against Parson Thumpcushion, 
who would rather have laid me in my father's 
tomb than seen me either a novelist or an actor, 
two characters which I thus hit upon a method 
of uniting. After all, it was not half so foolish 
as if I had written romances instead of reciting 
them. 

The following pages will contain a picture of 
my vagrant life, intermixed with specimens, gen- 
erally brief and slight, of that great mass of fic- 
tion to which I gave existence, and which has 
vanished like cloud-shapes. Besides the occa- 
sions when I sought a pecuniary reward, I was 
accustomed to exercise my narrative faculty 
wherever chance' had collected a little audience 
idle enough to listen. These rehearsals were 
useful in testing the strong points of my stories ; 
and, indeed, the flow of fancy soon came upon 
me so abundantly that its indulgence was its own 
reward, though the hope of praise also became a 
powerful incitement. Since I shall never feel the 
warm gush of new thought as I did then, let me be- 
seech the reader to believe that my tales were not 
always so cold as he may find them now. With 
each specimen will be given a sketch of the cir- 
cumstances in which the story was told. Thus 
my air-drawn pictures will be set in frames per- 
haps more valuable than the pictures themselves, 
since they will be embossed with groups of char- 
acteristic figures, amid the lake and mountain 



2o6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

scenery, the villages and fertile fields, of our na- 
tive land. But I write the book for the sake of 
its moral, which many a dreaming youth may 
profit by, though it is the experience of a wan- 
dering story-teller. 

A FLIGHT IN THE FOG. 

I SET out on my rambles one morning in June 
about sunrise. The day promised to be fair^ 
though at that early hour a heavy mist lay along 
the earth and settled in minute globules on the 
folds of my clothes, so that I looked precisely as 
if touched with a hoar-frost. The sky was quite 
obscured, and the trees and houses invisible till 
they grew out of the fog as I came close upon 
them. There is a hill towards the west whence 
the road goes abruptly down, holding a level 
course through the village and ascending an 
eminence on the other side, behind which it dis- 
appears. The whole view comprises an extent 
of half a mile. Here I paused ; and, while gazing 
through the misty veil, it partially rose and swept 
away with so sudden an effect that a gray cloud 
seemed to have taken the aspect of a small 
white town. A thin vapor being still diffused 
through the atmosphere, the wreaths and pillars of 
fog, whether hung in air or based on earth, ap- 
peared not less substantial than the edifices, and 
gave their own indistinctness to the whole. It 
was singular that such an unromantic scene 
should look so visionary. 

Hal/: of the parson's dwelling was a dingy 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 207 

white house, and half of it was a cloud ; but 
Squire Moody's mansion, the grandest in the 
village, was wholly visible, even the lattice-work 
of the balcony under the front window; while in 
another place only two red chimneys were seen 
above the mist, appertaining to my own paternal 
residence, then tenanted by strangers. I could 
not remember those with whom I had dwelt 
there, not even my mother. The brick edifice of 
the bank was in the clouds ; the foundations of 
what was to be a great block of buildings had 
vanished, ominously, as it proved ; the dry-goods 
store of Mr. Nightingale seemed a doubtful con- 
cern ; and Dominions Pike's tobacco manufac- 
tory an affair of smoke, except the splendid 
image of an Indian chief in front. The white 
spire of the meeting-house ascended out of the 
densest heap of vapor, as if that shadowy base 
were its only support : or, to give a truer inter- 
pretation, the steeple was the emblem of Religion, 
enveloped in mystery below, yet pointing to a 
cloudless atmosphere, and catching the bright- 
ness of the east on its gilded vane. 

As I beheld these objects, and the dewy 
street, with grassy intervals and a border of trees 
between the wheel-track and the sidewalks, all 
so indistinct, and not to be traced without an 
effort, the whole seemed more like memory than 
reality. I would have imagined that years had 
already passed, and I was far away, contemplat- 
ing that dim picture of my native place, which I 
should retain in my mind through the mist of 
time. No tears fell from my eyes among the 



'2o8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

dewdrops of the morning ; nor does it occur ta 
me that I heaved a sigh. In truth, I had never 
felt such a delicious excitement nor known what 
freedom was till that moment when I gave up my 
home and took the whole world in exchange, flut- 
tering the wings of my spirit as if I would have 
flown from one star to another through the uni- 
verse. I waved my hand towards the dusky 
village, bade it a joyous farewell, ai d turned 
away to follow any path but that which might 
lead me back. Never was Childe Harold's sen- 
timent adopted in a spirit more unlike his own. 

Naturally enough, I thought of Don Quixote. 
Recollecting how the knight and Sancho had 
watched for auguries when they took the road to 
Toboso, I began, between jest and earnest, to 
feel a similar anxiety. It was gratified, and by a 
more poetical phenomenon than the br ying of the 
dappled ass or the neigh of Rosinante. The 
sun, then just above the horizon, shone faintly 
through the fog, and formed a species of rainbow 
in the west, bestriding my intended road like a 
gigantic portal. I had never known before that 
a bow could be generated between the sunshine 
and the morning mist. It had no brilliancy, no 
perceptible hues, but was a mere unpainted 
framework, as white and ghostlike as the lunar 
rainbow, which is deemed ominous of evil. But, 
with a light heart, to which all omens were propi- 
tious, I advanced beneath the misty archway of 
futurity. 

I had determined not to enter on my profession 
within a hundred miles of home, and then to 



MOSSES FR OM A N OLD MANSE. 2 09 

cover myself with a fictitious name. The first 
precaution was reasonable enough, as otherwise 
Parson Thumpcushion might have put an un- 
timely catastrophe to my story ; but as nobody 
would be much affected by my disgrace, and all 
was to be suffered in my own person, I know 
not why I cared about a name. For a week or 
two I travelled almost at random, seeking hardly 
any guidance except the w^hirling of a leaf at 
some turn of the road, or the green bough that 
beckoned me, or the naked branch that pointed 
its withered finger onward. All my care was to 
be farther from home each night than the pre- 
ceding morning. 

A FELLOW-TRAVELLER. 

One day at noontide, when the sun had burst 
suddenly out of a cloud, and threatened to dis- 
solve me, I looked round for shelter, whether of 
tavern, cottage, barn, or shady tree. The first 
which offered itself was a wood, — not a forest, 
but a trim plantation of young oaks, growing just 
thick enough to keep the mass of sunshine out, 
while they admitted a few straggling beams, and 
thus produced the most cheerful gloom imagi- 
nable. A brook, so small and clear, and appar- 
ently so cool, that I wanted to drink it up, ran 
under the road through a little arch of stone 
without once meeting the sun in its passage from 
the shade on one side to the shade on the other. 
As there was a stepping-place over the stone wall 
and a path along the rivulet, I followed it and 
14 



210 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

discovered its source, — a spring gushing out of 
an old barrel. 

In this pleasant spot I saw a light pack sus- 
pended from the branch of a tree, a stick leaning 
against the trunk, and a person seated on the 
grassy verge of the spring, with his back towards 
me. He was a slender figure, dressed in black 
broadcloth, which was none of the finest nor 
very fashionably cut. On hearing my footsteps 
he started up rather nervously, and, turning 
round, showed the face of a young man about 
my own age, wdth his finger in a volume which 
he had been reading till my intrusion. His book 
was evidently a pocket Bible. Though I piqued 
myself at that period on my great penetration 
into people's characters and pursuits, I could not 
decide whether this young man in black were an 
unfledged divine from Andover, a college student, 
or preparing for college at some academy. In 
either case I would quite as willingly have found 
a merrier companion ; such, for instance, as the 
comedian with whom Gil Bias shared his dinner 
beside a fountain in Spain. 

After a nod, which was duly returned, I made 
a goblet of oak-leaves, filled and emptied it two 
or three times, and then remarked, to hit the 
stranger's classical associations, that this beauti- 
ful fountain ought to flow from an urn instead of 
an old barrel. He did not show that he under- 
stood the allusion, and replied very briefly, with 
a shyness that was quite out of place between per- 
sons who met in such circumstances. Had he 
treated my next observation in the same way, we 
should have parted without another word. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 2 II 

" It is very singular," said I, — "though doubt- 
less there are good reasons for it, — that Nature 
should provide drink so abundantly, and lavish it 
everywhere by the roadside, but so seldom any- 
thing to eat. Why should not we find a loaf of 
bread on this tree as well as a barrel of good 
liquor at the foot of it ? " 

" There is a loaf of bread on the tree," replied 
the stranger, without even smiling at a coinci- 
dence which made me laugh. " I have something 
to eat in my bundle ; and, if you can make a din- 
ner with me, you shall be welcome." 

" I accept your offer with pleasure," said I. 
" A pilgrim such as I am must not refuse a prov- 
idential meal." 

The young man had risen to take his bundle 
from the branch of the tree, but now turned round 
and regarded me with great earnestness, coloring 
deeply at the same time. However, he said noth- 
ing, and produced part of a loaf of bread and 
some cheese, the former being evidently home 
baked, though some days out of the oven. The 
fare was good enough, with a real welcome, such 
as his appeared to be. After spreading these 
articles on the stump of a tree, he proceeded to 
ask a blessing on our food, an unexpected cere- 
mony, and quite an impressive one at our wood- 
land table, with the fountain gushing beside us 
and the bright sky glimmering through the boughs ; 
nor did his brief petition affect me less because 
his embarrassment made his voice tremble. At 
the end of the meal he returned thanks with the 
same tremulous fervor. 



212 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

He felt a natural kindness for me after thus re- 
lieving my necessities, and showed it by becoming 
less reserved. On my part, I professed never to 
have relished a dinner better ; and, in requital of 
the stranger's hospitality, solicited the pleasure of 
his company to supper. 

" Where ? At your home ? " asked he. 

"Yes," said I, smiling. 

" Perhaps our roads are not the same," observed 
he. 

"O, I can take any road but one, and yet not 
miss my way," answered I. " This morning I 
breakfasted at home ; I shall sup at home to-night ; 
and a moment ago I dined at home. To be sure, 
there was a certain place which I called home ; 
but I have resolved not to see it again till I have 
been quite round the globe and enter the street on 
the east as I left it on the west. In the mean 
time, I have a home everywhere, or nowhere, just 
as you please to take it." 

" Nowhere, then ; for this transitory world is 
not our home," said the young man, with solem- 
nity. " We are all pilgrims and wanderers ; but 
it is strange that we two should meet." 

I inquired the meaning of this remark, but could 
obtain no satisfactory reply. But we had eaten 
salt together, and it was right that we should form 
acquaintance after that ceremony as the Arabs of 
the desert do, especially as he had learned some- 
thing about myself, and the courtesy of the coun- 
try entitled me to as much information in return. 
I asked whither he was travelling. 

'' I do not know," said he ; " but God knows/' 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 2 15 

" That is strange ! " exclaimed I ; " not that 
God should know it, but that you should not. 
And how is your road to be pointed out ? " 

'' Perhaps by an inward conviction/' he replied, 
looking sideways at me to discover whether I 
smiled ; " perhaps by an outward sign." 

" Then, beUeve me," said I, " the outward sign 
is already granted you, and the inward conviction 
ought to follow, We are told of pious men in old 
times who c<»mjL.itted themselves to the care of 
Providence, ai c saw the manifestation of its will 
in the slightes : : rcumstances, as in the shooting 
of a star, the ^Jigbt of a bird, or the course taken 
by some brute animal. Sometimes even a stupid 
ass was their guide. May I not be as good a 
one ? " 

" I do not know," said the pilgrim, with perfect 
simplicity. 

We did, however, follow the same road, and 
were not overtaken, as I partly apprehended, by 
the keepers of any lunatic asylum in pursuit of a 
stray patient. Perhaps the stranger felt as much 
doubt of my sanity as I did of his, though cer- 
tainly with less justice, since I was fully aware of 
my own extravagances, while he acted as wildly, 
and deemed it heavenly wisdom. We were a 
singular couple, strikingly contrasted, yet curi- 
ously assimilated, each of us remarkable enough 
by himself, and doubly so in the other's company. 
Without any formal compact, we kept together 
day after day till our union appeared permanent. 
Even had I seen nothing to love and admire in 
him, I could never have thought of deserting on@ 



2 1 4 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

who needed me continually ; for I never knew a 
person, not even a woman, so unfit to roam the 
world in solitude as he was, — so painfully shy, so 
easily discouraged by slight obstacles, and so 
often depressed by a weight within himself. 

I was now far from my native place, but had 
not yet stepped before the public. A slight 
tremor seized me whenever I thought of relin- 
quishing the immunities of a private character, 
and giving every man, and for money too, the right 
which no man yet possessed, of treating me with 
open scorn. But about a week after contracting 
the above alliance I made my bow to an audience 
of nine persons, seven of whom hissed me in a 
very disagreeable manner, and not without good 
cause. Indeed, the failure was so signal that it 
would have been mere swindling to retain the 
money, which had been paid on my implied con- 
tract to give its value of amusement. So I called 
in the doorkeeper, bade him refund the whole re- 
ceipts, a mighty sum, and was gratified with a 
round of applause by way of offset to the hisses. 
This event would have looked most horrible in 
anticipation, — a thing to make a man shoot him- 
self, or run amuck, or hide himself in caverns 
where he might not see his own burning blush ; 
but the reality was not so very hard to bear. It 
is a fact that I was more deeply grieved by an 
almost parallel misfortune which happened to my 
companion on the same evening. In my own be- 
half I was angry and excited, not depressed ; my 
blood ran quick, my spirits rose buoyantly, and I 
had never felt such a confidence of future success 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 215 

and determination to achieve it as at that trying 
moment. I resolved to persevere, if it were only 
to wring the reluctant praise from my enemies. 

Hitherto I had immensely underrated the 
difficulties of my idle trade ; now I recognized 
that it demanded nothing short of my whole 
powers cultivated to the utmost, and exerted with 
the same prodigality as if I were speaking for a 
great party or for the nation at large on the floor 
of the Capitol. No talent or attainment could 
come amiss ; everything, indeed, was requisite, 
— wide observation, varied knowledge, deep 
thoughts, and sparkling ones ; pathos and levity, 
and a mixture of both, like sunshine in a rain- 
drop ; lofty imagination, veiling itself in the garb 
of common life ; and the practised art which alone 
could render these gifts, and more than these, 
available. Not that I ever hoped to be thus 
qualified. But my despair was no ignoble one ; 
for, knowing the impossibility of satisfying my- 
self, even should the world be satisfied, I did my 
best to overcome it ; investigated the causes of 
every defect ; and strove, with patient stubborn- 
ness, to remove them in the next attempt. It is 
one of my few sources of pride, that, ridiculous 
as the object was, I followed it up with the firm- 
ness and energy of a man. 

I manufactured a great variety of plots and 
skeletons of tales, and kept them ready for use, 
leaving the filling up to the inspiration of the 
moment ; though I cannot remember ever to have 
told a tale which did not vary considerably from 
my preconceived idea, and acquire a novelty of 



2i6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

aspect as often as I repeated it. Oddly enough, 
my success was generally in proportion to the 
difference between the conception and accom- 
plishment. I provided two or more commence- 
ments and catastrophes to many of the tales, — a 
happy expedient, suggested by the double sets of 
sleeves and trimmings which diversified the suits 
in Sir Piercy Shafton's wardrobe. But my best 
efforts had a unity, a wholeness, and a separate 
character that did not admit of this sort of mech- 
anism. 

THE VILLAGE THEATRE. 

About the first of September my fellow-travel- 
ler and myself arrived at a country town, where 
a small company of actors, on their return from 
a summer's campaign in the British Provinces, 
were giving a series of dramatic exhibitions. A 
moderately sized hall of the tavern had been con- 
verted into a theatre. The performances that 
evening were, The Heir at Law, and No Song, 
no Supper, with the recitation of Alexander's 
Feast between the play and farce. The house 
was thin and dull. But the next day there 
appeared to be brighter prospects, the playbills 
announcing at every corner, on the town-pump, 
and — awful sacrilege ! — on the very door of th« 
meeting-house, an Unprecedented Attraction ! 
After setting forth the ordinary entertainments of 
a theatre, the public were informed, in the hugest 
type that the printing-office could supply, that the 
manager had been fortunate enough to accom- 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 2 1 7 

plish an engagement with the celebrated Story- 
Teller. He woiald make his first appearance that 
evening, and recite his famous tale of Mr. Hig- 
ginbotham's Catastrophe, which had been 
received with rapturous applause by audiences in 
all the principal cities. This outrageous flourish 
of trumpets, be it known, was wholly unauthorized 
by me, who had merely made an engagement for 
a single evening, without assuming any more 
celebrity than the little I possessed. As for the 
tale, it could hardly have been applauded by 
rapturous audiences, being as yet an unfilled plot ; 
nor even when I stepped upon the stage was it 
decided whether Mr. Higginbotham should live or 
die. 

In two or three places, underneath the flaming 
bills which announced the Story-Teller, was 
pasted a small slip of paper, giving notice, in 
tremulous characters, of a religious meeting to 
be held at the school-house, where, with divine 
permission, Eliakim Abbott would address sin- 
ners on the welfare of their immortal souls. 

In the evening, after the commencement of the 
tragedy of Douglas, I took a ramble through the 
town to quicken my ideas by active motion. My 
spirits were good, with a certain glow of mind 
which I had already learned to depend upon as 
the sure prognostic of success. Passing a small 
and solitary school-house, where a light was 
burning dimly and a few people were entering 
the door, I went in with them, and saw my friend 
Eliakim at the desk. He had collected about 
fifteen hearers, mostly females. Just as I entered 



2i8 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

he was beginning to pray in accents so low and 
interrupted that he seemed to doubt the reception 
of his efforts both with God and man. There 
was room for distrust in regard to the latter. At 
the conclusion of the prayer several of the little 
audience went out, leaving him to begin his dis- 
course under such discouraging circumstances, 
added to his natural and agonizing diffidence. 
Knowing that my presence on these occasions 
increased his embarrassment, I had stationed 
myself in a dusky place near the door, and now 
stole softly out. 

On my return to the tavern the tragedy was 
already concluded ; and, being a feeble one in 
itself and indifferently performed, it left so much 
the better chance for the Story-Teller. The bar 
was thronged with customers, the toddy-stick 
keeping a continual tattoo ; while in the hall 
there was a broad, deep, buzzing sound, with an 
occasional peal of impatient thunder, — all symp- 
toms of an overflowing house and an eager audi- 
ence. I drank a glass of wine-and-water, and 
stood at the side scene conversing with a young 
person of doubtful sex. If a gentleman, how 
could he have performed the singing girl the 
night before in No Song, no Supper .^ Or, if a 
lady, why did she enact Young Norval, and now 
wear a green coat and white pantaloons in the 
character of Little Pickle .'* In either case the 
dress was pretty and the wearer bewitching ; so 
that, at the proper moment, I stepped forward 
with a gay heart and a bold one ; while the 
orchestra played a tune that had resounded at 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



219 



many a country ball, and the curtain, as it rose, 
discovered something like a country bar-room. 
Such a scene was well enough adapted to such a 
tale. 

The orchestra of our little theatre consisted 
of two fiddles and a clarinet ; but, if the whole 
harmony of the Tremont had been there, it might 
have swelled in vain beneath the tumult of ap- 
plause that greeted me. The good people of the 
town, knowing that the world contained innumer- 
able persons of celebrity undreamed of by them, 
took it for granted that I was one, and that their 
roar of welcome was but a feeble echo of those 
which had thundered around me in lofty theatres. 
Such an enthusiastic uproar was never heard. 
Each person seemed a Briareus clapping a hun- 
dred hands, besides keeping his feet and several 
cudgels in play with stamping and thumping on 
the floor ; while the ladies flourished their white 
cambric handkerchiefs, intermixed with yellow 
and red bandanna, like the flags of different 
nations. After such a salutation, the celebrated 
Story-Teller felt almost ashamed to produce so 
humble an affair as Mr. Higginbotham's Catas- 
trophe. 

This story was originally more dramatic than 
as there presented, and afforded good scope for 
mimicry and buffoonery, neither of which, to my 
shame, did I spare. I never knew the '' magic 
of a name '^ till I used that of Mr. Higginbotham. 
Often as I repeated it, there were louder bursts 
of merriment than those which responded to 
what, ii? my opinion, were more legitimate strokes 



2 20 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

of humor. The success of the piece was incal- 
culably heightened by a stiff cue of horsehair, 
which Little Pickle, in the spirit of that mischief- 
loving character, had fastened to my collar, where, 
unknown to me, it kept making the queerest gest- 
ures of its own in correspondence with all mine. 
The audience, supposing that some enormous 
joke was appended to this long tail behind, were 
ineffably delighted, and gave way to such a 
tumult of approbation that, just as the story 
closed, the benches broke beneath them and left 
one whole row of my admirers on the floor. 
Even in that predicament they continued their 
applause. In after times, when I had grown a 
bitter moralizer, I took this scene for an example 
how much of fame is humbug; how much the 
meed of what our better nature blushes at ; how 
much an accident ; how much bestowed on mis- 
taken principles ; and how small and poor the 
remnant. From pit and boxes there was now a 
universal call for the Story-Teller. 

That celebrated personage came not when they 
did call to him. As I left the stage, the landlord, 
being also the postmaster, had given me a letter 
with the postmark of my native village, and 
directed to my assumed name in the stiff old 
handwriting of Parson Thumpcushion. Doubt- 
less he had heard of the rising renown of the 
Story-Teller, and conjectured at once that such a 
nondescript luminary could be no other than his 
lost ward. His epistle, though I never read it, 
affected me most painfully. I seemed to see the 
Puritanic figure of my guardian standing among 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 221 

the fripperies of the theatre and pointing to the 
players, — the fantastic and effeminate men, the 
painted women, the giddy girl in boy^s clothes, 
merrier than modest, — pointing to these with 
solemn ridicule, and eying me with stern rebuke. 
His image was a type of the austere duty, and 
they of the vanities of Hfe. 

I hastened with the letter to my chamber and 
held it unopened in my hand, while the applause 
of my buffoonery yet sounded through the theatre. 
Another train of thought came over me. The 
stern old man appeared again, but now with the 
gentleness of sorrow, softening his authority with 
love as a father might, and even bending his 
venerable head, as if to say that my errors had 
an apology in his own mistaken discipline. I 
strode twice across the chamber, then held the 
letter in the flame of the candle, and beheld it 
consume unread. It is fixed in my mind, and 
was so at the time, that he had addressed me in 
a style of paternal wisdom, and love, and recon- 
ciliation which I could not have resisted had I 
but risked the trial. The thought still haunts 
me that then I made my irrevocable choice be- 
tween good and evil fate. 

Meanwhile, as this occurrence had disturbed 
my mind and indisposed me to the present ex- 
ercise of my profession, I left the town, in spite 
of a laudatory critique in the newspaper, and 
untempted by the liberal offers of the manager. 
As we walked onward, following the same road. 
on two such different errands, Eliakim groaned 
in spirit, and labored with tears to convince me 
of the guilt and madness of my life. 



222 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



SKETCHES FROM MEMORY. 

THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 

It was now the middle of September. We had 
come since sunrise from Bartlett, passing up 
through the valley of the Saco, which extends 
between mountainous walls, sometimes with a 
steep ascent, but often as level as a church-aisle. 
All that day and two preceding ones we had been 
loitering towards the heart of the White Mount- 
ains, — those old crystal hills, whose mysterious 
brilliancy had gleamed upon our distant wander- 
ings before we thought of visiting them. Height 
after height had risen and towered one above 
another till the clouds began to hang below the 
peaks. Down their slopes were the red path- 
ways of. the slides, those avalanches of earth, 
stones, and trees, which descend into the hollows, 
leaving vestiges of their track hardly to be 
effaced by the vegetation of ages. We had mount- 
ains behind us and mountains on each side, 
and a group of mightier ones ahead. Still our 
road went up along the Saco, right towards the 
centre of that group, as if to climb abovii the 
clouds in its passage to the farther region. 

In old times the settlers used to be astounded 
by the inroads of the Northern Indians, coming 



MOSSES FROM AN" OLD MANSE. 223 

down upon them from this mountain rampart 
through some defile known only to themselves. 
It is, indeed, a wondrous path. A demon, it 
might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was trav- 
elling up the valley, elbowing the heights care- 
lessly aside as he passed, till at length a great 
mountain took its stand directly across his in- 
tended road. He tarries not for such an ob- 
stacle, but, rending it asunder a thousand feet 
from peak to base, discloses its treasures of 
hidden minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets 
of the mountain's inmost heart, with a mighty fract- 
ure of rugged precipices on each side. This is 
the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me 
that I have attempted to describe it by so mean 
an image, feeling, as I do, that it is one of those 
symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the sen- 
timent, though not 'to the conception, of Omnipo- 
tence. 



We had now reached a narrow passage, which 
showed almost the appearance of having been 
cut by human strength and artifice in the solid 
rock. There was a wall of granite on each side, 
high and precipitous, especially on our right, 
and so smooth that a few evergreens could 
hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This 
is the entrance, or, in the direction we were 
going, the extremity, of the romantic defile of the 
Notch. Before emerging from it, the rattling of 
wheels approached behind us, and a stage-coach 
rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on top 



224 MOSSES FROM AJV OLD MANSE, 

and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a drab 
great-coat, touching the wheel-horses with the 
whip-stock and reining in the leaders. To my 
mind there was a sort of poetry in such an inci- 
dent, hardly inferior to what would have accom- 
panied the painted array of an Indian war-party 
gliding forth from the same wild chasm. All the 
passengers, except a very fat lady on the back 
seat, had alighted. One was a mineralogist, a 
scientific, green-spectacled figure in black, bear- 
ing a heavy hammer, with which he did great dam- 
age to the precipices, and put the fragments in his 
pocket. Another was a well-dressed young man, 
who carried an opera-glass set in gold, and 
seemed to be making a quotation from some of 
Byron's rhapsodies on mountain scenery. There 
w^as also a trader, returning from Portland to the 
upper part of Vermont ; and a fair young girl, 
with a very faint bloom like one of those pale and 
delicate flowers which sometimes occur among 
alpine cliffs. 

They disappeared, and we followed them, pass- 
ing through a deep pine forest, w4iich for some 
miles allowed us to see nothing but its own dis- 
mal shade. Towards nightfall we reached a 
level amphitheatre, surrounded by a great ram- 
part of hills, which shut out the sunshine long 
before it left the external world. It was here 
that we obtained our first view, except at a dis- 
tance, of the principal group of mountains. They 
are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated 
in a proper mood, yet, by their breadth of base 
and the long ridges which support them, give the 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 225 

idea of immense bulk rather than of towering 
height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked near 
to Heaven : he was white with snow a mile 
downward, and had caught the only cloud that 
was sailing through the atmosphere to veil his. 
head. Let us forget the other names of Ameri^ 
can statesmen that have been stamped upon these^ 
hills, but still call the loftiest Washington^ 
Mountains are Earth's undecaying monuments. 
They must stand while she endures, and never 
shouM be consecrated to the mere great men of: 
their own age and country, but to the mighty 
ones alone, whose glory is universal, and whom 
all time will render illustrious. 

The air, not often sultry in this elevated re- 
gion, nearly two thousand feet above the sea, 
was now sharp and cold, like that of a clear 
November evening in the lowlands. By morning, 
probably, there would be a frost, if not a snow- 
fall, on the grass and rye, and an icy surface 
over the standing water. I was glad to perceive 
a prospect of comfortable quarters in a house 
which we were approaching, and of pleasant 
company in the guests who were assembled at; 
the door. 



OUR EVENING PARTY AMONG THE MOUNTAINSc 

We stood in front of a good substantial farm- 
house, of old date in that wild country. A sigrt 
over the door denoted it to be the White Mount- 
ain Post-Office, — an establishment which distrib- 
15 



S2 6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

^ates letters and newspapers to perhaps a score 
of persons, comprising* the population of two or 
three townships among the hills. The broad and 
A^v'eighty antlers of a deer, " a stag of ten,'' were 
fastened at the corner of the house ; a fox's bushy 
tail was nailed beneath them ; and a huge black 
paw lay on the ground, newly severed and still 
bleeding, — the trophy of a bear-hunt. Among 
several persons collected about the doorsteps, 
the most remarkable was a sturdy mounta^ineer, 
of six feet two, and corresponding bulk, with a 
heavy set of features, such as might be moulded 
on his own blacksmith's anvil, but yet indicative 
of mother wit and rough humor. As we ap- 
peared, he uplifted a tin trumpet, four or five feet 
long, and blew a tremendous blast, either in honor 
of our arrival or to awaken an echo from the 
opposite hill. 

Ethan Crawford's guests were of such a motley 
description as to form quite a picturesque group, 
seldom seen together except at some place like 
this, at once the pleasure-house of fashionable 
tourists and the homely inn of country travellers. 
Among the company at the door were the min- 
eralogist and the owner of the gold opera-glass 
whom we had encountered in the Notch ; two 
Georgian gentlemen, who had chilled their South- 
ern blood that morning on the top of Mount 
Washington ; a physician and his wife from Con- 
^'ay ; a trader of Burlington and an old squire 
of the Green Mountains ; and two young married 
couples, all the way from Massachusetts, on the 
matrimonial jaunt. Besides these strangers, the 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 227 

rugged county of Coos, in which we were, was rep- 
resented by half a dozen wood-cutters, who had 
slain a bear in the forest and smitten off his paw. 

I had joined the party, and had a moment's 
leisure to examine them before the echo of 
Ethan's blast returned from the hill. Not one, 
but many echoes had caught up the harsh and 
tuneless sound, untwisted its complicated threads,, 
and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one- 
stern trumpet-tone. It was a distinct yet distant 
and dream-like symphony of melodious instru- 
ments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the. 
hillside and made faint music at the summons. 
No subsequent trial produced so clear, delicate, 
and spiritual a concert as the first. A field-piece 
was then discharged from the top of a neighbor- 
ing hill, and gave birth to one long reverberation, 
which ran round the circle of mountains in an- 
unbroken chain of sound and rolled away with- 
out a separate echo. After these experiments, 
the cold atmosphere drove us all into the house, 
with the keenest appetites for supper. 

It did one's heart good to see the great fires 
that were kindled in the parlor and bar-room, 
especially the latter, where the fireplace was. 
built of rough stone, and might have contained 
the trunk of an old tree for a backlog. A maa 
keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest 
is at his very door. In the parlor, when the 
evening was fairly set in, we held our hands be- 
fore our eyes to shield them from the ruddy 
glow, and began a pleasant variety of conversa- 
tion. The mineralogist and the physician talked 



^28 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

about the invigorating qualities of the mountain 
air, and its excellent effect on Ethan Crawford's 
father, an old man of seventy-five, with the un- 
broken frame of middle life. The two brides 
and the doctor's wife held a whispered discus- 
sion, which, by their frequent titterings and a 
blush or two, seemed to have reference to the 
trials or enjoyments of the matrimonial state. 
The bridegrooms sat together in a corner, rigidly 
.silent, like Quakers whom the spirit moveth not, 
being still in the odd predicament of bashfulness 
towards their own young wives. The Green 
Mountain squire chose me for his companion, 
and described the difficulties he had met with 
half a century ago in travelling from the Con- 
necticut River through the Notch to Conway, 
now a single day's journey, though it had cost 
Jiim eighteen. The Georgians held the album 
between them, and favored us with the few speci- 
mens of its contents, which they considered 
ridiculous enough to be worth hearing. One ex- 
tract met with deserved applause. It was a 
" Sonnet to the Snow on Mount Washington,'' 
and had been contributed that very afternoon, 
tearing a signature of great distinction in maga- 
zines and annuals. The lines were elegant and 
full of fancy, but too remote from familiar senti- 
ment, and cold as their subject, resembling those 
curious specimens of crystallized vapor which I 
observed next day on the mountain-top. The 
poet was understood to be the young gentleman 
of the gold opera-glass, who heard our laudatory 
remarks with the composure of a veteran. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 229 

Such was our party, and such their ways of 
amusement. But on a winter evening another 
set of guests assembled at the hearth where these 
summer travellers were now sitting. I once had 
it in contemplation to spend a month hereabouts, 
in sleighing-time, for the sake of studying the 
yeoman of New England, who then elbow each 
other through the Notch by hundreds, on their 
way to Portland. There could be no better 
school for such a purpose than Ethan Crawford's 
inn. Let the student go thither in December, sit 
down with the teamsters at their meals, share 
their evening merriment, and repose with them 
at night when every bed has its three occupants, 
and parlor, bar-room, and kitchen are strewn 
with slumberers around the fire. Then let him 
rise before daylight, button his great-coat, miifHe 
up his ears, and stride with the departing caravan 
a mile or two, to see how sturdily they make 
head against the blast. A treasure of character- 
istic traits will repay all inconveniences, even 
should a frozen nose be of the number. 

The conversation of our party soon became 
more animated and sincere, and we recounted 
some traditions of the Indians, who believed that 
the father and mother of their race were saved 
from a deluge by ascending the peak of Mount 
Washington. The children of that pair have- 
been overwhelmed, and found no such refuge. 
In the mythology of the savage, these mountains 
were afterwards considered sacred and inaccess- 
ible, full of unearthly wonders, illuminated at 
lofty heights by the blaze of precious stones, and 



230 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

inhabited by deities, who sometimes shrouded 
themselves in the snow-storm and came down on 
the lower world. There are few legends more 
poetical than that of the '' Great Carbuncle '' of 
the White Mountains. The belief was communi- 
cated to the English settlers, and is hardly yet 
extinct, that a gem, of such immense size as to 
be seen shining miles away, hangs from a rock 
over a clear, deep lake, high up among the hills. 
They who had^ once beheld its splendor were en- 
thralled with an unutterable yearning to possess 
it. But a spirit guarded that inestimable jewel, 
and bewildered the adventurer with a dark mist 
from the*enchanted lake. Thus life was worn 
away in the vain search for an unearthly treasure, 
till at length the deluded one went up. the mount- 
ain, still sanguine as in youth, but returned no 
more. On this theme methinks I could frame a 
tale with a deep moral. 

The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to 
these superstitions of the red men, though we 
spoke of them in the centre of their haunted re- 
gion. The habits and sentiments of that de- 
parted people were too distinct from those ot 
their successors to find much real sympathy. It 
has often been a matter of regret to me that I 
Avas shut out from the most peculiar field of 
American fiction by an inability to see any ro- 
mance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the 
Indian character, at least till such traits were 
pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian 
story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a 
permanent place in our literature than the biog- 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 231 

rapher of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as 
referring to tribes which have mostly vanished 
from the earth, gives him a right to be placed on 
a classic shelf, apart from the merits which will 
sustain him there. 

I made inquiries whether, in his researches 
about these parts, our mineralogist had found 
the three " Silver Hills " which an Indian sachem 
sold to an Englishman nearly two hundred years 
ago, and the treasure of which the posterity of 
the purchaser have been looking for ever since. 
But the man of science had ransacked every hill 
along the Saco, and knew nothing of these pro- 
digious piles of wealth. By this time, as usual 
with men on the eve of great adventure, we had 
prolonged our session deep into the night, con- 
sidering how early we were to set out on our six 
miles' ride to the foot of Mount Washington. 
There was now a general breaking up. I scru- 
tinized the faces of the two bridegrooms, and 
saw but little probability of their leaving the 
bosom of earthly bliss, in the first week of the 
honeymoon and at the frosty hour of three, to 
climb above the clouds ; nor, when I felt how 
sharp the wind was as it rushed through a broken 
pane and eddied between the chinks of my un- 
plastered chamber, did I anticipate much alacrity 
on my own part, though we were to seek for the 
'' Great Carbuncle/' 



232 ' MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



THE CANAL-BOAT. 

I WAS inclined to be poetical about the Grand 
Canal. In my imagination De Witt Clinton was 
an enchanter, who had waved his magic wand 
from the Hudson to Lake Erie and united them 
by a watery highway, crowded with the commerce 
of two worlds, till then inaccessible to each other. 
This simple and mighty conception had conferred 
inestimable value on spots which Nature seemed 
to have thrown carelessly into the great body of 
the earth, without foreseeing that they could ever 
attain importance. I pictured the surprise of the 
sleepy Dutchmen when the new river first glittered 
by their doors, bringing them hard cash or foreign 
commodities in exchange for their hithcito un- 
marketable produce. Surely the water of this 
canal must be the most fertilizing of all fluids ; 
for it causes towns, with their masses of brick and 
stone, their churches and theatres, their business 
and hubbub, their luxury and refinement, their 
gay dames and polished citizens, to spring up, till 
in time the wondrous stream may flow between 
two continuous lines of buildings, through one 
thronged street, from Buffalo to Albany. I em- 
barked about thirty miles below Utica, de- 
termining to voyage along the whole extent 
of the canal at least twice in the course of the 
summer. 

Behold us, then, fairly afloat, with three horses 
harnessed to our vessel, like the steeds of Neptune 
to a huge scallop-shell in mythological pictures. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 233 

Bound to a distant port, we had neither chart nor 
compass, nor cared about the wind, nor felt the 
heaving of a billow, nor dreaded shipwreck, how- 
ever fierce the tempest, in our adventurous navi- 
gation of an interminable mud-puddle ; for a 
mud-puddle it seemed, and as dark and turbid as 
if every kennel in the land paid contribution to it. 
With an imperceptible current, it holds its drowsy 
way through all the dismal swamps and unim- 
pressive scenery that could be found between the 
great lakes and the sea-coast. Yet there is vari- 
ety enough, both on the surface of the canal and 
along its banks, to amuse the traveller, if an 
overpowering tedium did not deaden his per- 
ceptions. 

Sometimes we met a black and rusty-looking 
vessel, laden with lumber, salt from Syracuse, or 
Genesee flour, and shaped at both ends like a 
square-toed boot, as if it had two sterns, and were 
fated always to advance backward. On its deck 
would be a square hut, and a woman seen through 
the window at her household work, with a little 
tribe of children who perhaps had been born in 
this strange dwelling and knew no other home. 
Thus, while the husband smoked his pipe at the 
helm and the eldest son rode one of the horses, 
on went the family, travelling hundreds of miles in 
their own house and carrying their fireside with 
them. The most frequent species of craft were 
the " line-boats," which had a cabin at each end, 
and a great bulk of barrels, bales, and boxes in 
the midst, or light packets like our own decked 
all over with a row of curtained windows from 



234 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

stem to stern, and a drowsy face at ever one* 
Once we encountered a boat of rude construction, 
painted all in gloomy black, and manned by three 
Indians, who gazed at us in silence and with a 
singular fixedness of eye. Perhaps these three 
alone, among the ancient possessors of the land, 
had attempted to derive benefit from the white 
man's mighty projects and float along the current 
of his enterprise. Not long after, in the midst of 
a swamp and beneath a clouded sky, we overtook 
a vessel that seemed full of mirth and sunshine. 
It contained a little colony of Swiss on their way 
to Michigan, clad in garments of strange fashion 
and gay colors, scarlet yellow, and bright blue, 
singing, laughing, and making merry in odd tones 
and a babble of outlandish words. One pretty 
damsel, with a beautiful pair of naked white arms, 
addressed a mirthful remark to me. She spoke 
in her native tongue, apd I retorted in good 
English, both of us laughing heartily at each 
other's unintelligible wit. I cannot describe how 
pleasantly this incident affected me. These 
honest Swiss were an itinerant community of jest 
and fun journeying through a gloomy land and 
among a dull race of money-getting drudges, 
meeting none to understand their mirth, and only 
one to sympathize with it, yet still retaining the 
happy lightness of their own spirit. 

Had I been on my feet at the time instead of 
sailing slowly along in a dirty canal-boat, I should 
often have paused to contemplate the diversified 
panorama along the banks of the canal. Some- 
times the scene was a forest, dark, dense, and 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 235 

impervious, breaking away occasionally and re- 
ceding from a lonely tract, covered with dismal 
black stumps, where, on the verge of the canal, 
might be seen a log-cottage and a sallow-faced 
woman at the window. Lean and aguish, she 
looked like poverty personified, half clothed, half 
fed, and dwelling in a desert, while a tide of 
wealth was sweeping by her door. Two or three 
miles farther would bring us to a lock, where the 
slight impediment to navigation had created 
a little mart of trade. Here would be found 
commodities of all sorts, enumerated in yellow 
letters on the window-shutters of a small grocery- 
store, the owner of which had set his soul to the 
gathering of coppers and small change, buying 
and selling through the week, and counting 
his gains on the blessed Sabbath. The next 
scene might be the dwelling-houses and stores of 
a thriving village, built of wood or small gray 
stones, a church-spire rising in the midst, and 
generally two taverns, bearing over their piazzas 
the pompous titles of "hotel," "exchange," 
"tontine," or "coffee-house." Passing on, we 
glide now into the unquiet heart of an inland 
city, — of Utica, for instance, — and find our- 
selves amid piles of brick, crowded docks and 
quays, rich warehouses, and a busy population. 
We feel the eager and hurrying spirit of the place, 
like a stream and eddy whirling us along with it. 
Through the thickest of the tumult goes the 
canal, flowing between lofty rows of buildings 
and arched bridges of hewn stone. Onward, 
also, go we, till the hum and bustle of struggling 



236 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

enterprise die away behind us and we are thread- 
ing an avenue of the ancient woods again. 

This sounds not amiss in description, but was 
so tiresome in reaUty that w^e were driven to the 
most childish expedients for amusement. An 
English traveller paraded the deck, with a rifle in 
his walking-stick, and waged war on squirrels and 
woodpeckers, sometimes sending an unsuccessful 
bullet among flocks of tame ducks and geese 
which abound in the dirty water of the canal. I^ 
also, pelted these foolish birds with apples, and 
smiled at the ridiculous earnestness of their 
scrambles for the prize while the apple bobbed 
about like a thing of life. Several little accidents 
afforded us good-natured diversion. At the mo- 
ment of changing horses the tow-rope caught a 
Massachusetts farmer by the leg and threw him 
down in a very indescribable posture, leaving a 
purple mark around his sturdy limb. A new pas- 
senger fell flat on his back in attempting to step 
on deck as the boat emerged from under a bridge. 
Another, in his Sunday clothes, as good luck 
would have it, being told to leap aboard from the 
bank, forthwith plunged up to his third waist- 
coat-button in the canal, and was fished out in a 
very pitiable plight, not at all amended by our 
three rounds of applause. Anon a Virginia school- 
master, too intent on a pocket Virgil to heed the 
helmsman's warning, " Bridge ! bridge ! '^ was 
saluted by the said bridge on his knowledge-box. 
I had prostrated myself like a pagan before his 
idol, but heard the dull, leaden sound of the 
contact, and fully expected to see the treasures of 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 237 

the poor man^s cranium scattered about the deck. 
However, as there was no harm done, except a 
large bump on the head, and probably a corre- 
sponding dent in the bridge, the rest of us ex- 
changed glances and laughed quietly. O, how 
pitiless are idle people ! 

^ ,A^ .^ «\^ J^ 

^ ^TT ^ TV* ^ 

The table being now lengthened through the 
cabin and spread for supper, the next twenty 
minutes were the pleasantest I had spent on the 
canal, the same space at dinner excepted. At the 
close of the meal it had become dusky enough 
for lamplight. The rain pattered unceasingly on 
the deck, and sometimes came with a sullen rush 
against the windows, driven by the wind as it 
stirred through an opening of the forest. The 
intolerable dulness of the scene engendered an 
evil spirit in me. Perceiving that the Englishman 
was taking notes in a memorandum-book, with 
occasional glances round the cabin, I presumed 
that we were all to figure in a future volume of 
travels, and amused my ill-humor by falling into 
the probable vein of his remarks. He would hold 
up an imaginary mirror, wherein our reflected 
faces would appear ugly and ridiculous, yet still 
retain an undeniable likeness to the originals. 
Then, with more sweeping malice, he would make 
these caricatures the representatives of great 
classes of my countrymen. 

He glanced at the Virginia schoolmaster, a 
Yankee by birth, who, to recreate himself, was 
examining a freshman from Schenectady College 
in the conjugation of a Greek verb. Him the 



238 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

Englishman would portray as the scholar ol 
America, and compare his erudition to a school- 
boy's Latin theme made up of scraps ill-selected 
and worse put together. Next the tourist looked 
at the Massachusetts farmer, who was delivering 
a dogmatic harangue on the iniquity of Sunday 
mails. Here was the far-famed yeoman of New 
England ; his religion, writes the Englishman, is 
gloom on the Sabbath, long prayers every morning 
and eventide, and illiberality at all times ; his 
boasted information is merely an abstract and 
compound of newspaper paragraphs, Congress de- 
bates, caucus harangues, and the argument and 
judge's charge in his own lawsuits. The book- 
monger cast his eye at a Detroit merchant, and 
began scribbling faster than ever. In this sharp- 
eyed man, this lean man, of wrinkled brow, we 
see daring enterprise and close-fisted avarice 
combined. Here is the worshipper of Mammon 
at noonday ; here is the three times bankrupt, 
richer after every ruin ; here, in one word (O 
wicked Englishman to say it 1) here is the Ameri- 
can. He lifted his eyeglass to inspect a Western 
lady, who at once became aware of the glance, 
reddened, and retired deeper into the female part 
of the cabin. Here was the pure, modest, sen- 
sitive, and shrinking woman of America, — shrink- 
ing when no evil is intended, and sensitive like 
diseased flesh, that thrills if you but point at it ; 
and strangely modest, without confidence in the 
modesty of other people ; and admirably pure, 
with such a quick apprehension of all impurity. 
In this manner I went all through the cabin, 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 239 

hitting everybody as hard a lash as I could, and 
laying the whole blame on the infernal English- 
man. At length I caught the eyes of my own 
image in the looking-glass, where a number of the 
party w^re likewise reflected, and among them the 
Englishman, who at that moment was intently 
observing myself. 

■^ ^ ^ :^ ^ 

The crimson curtain being let down between 
the ladies and gentlemen, the cabin became a 
bedchamber for twenty persons, who were laid on 
shelves one above another. For a long time our 
various incommodities kept us all awake except 
five or six, who were accustomed to sleep nightly 
amid the uproar of their own snoring, and had 
little to dread from any other species of disturb- 
ance. It is a curious fact that these snorers had 
been the most quiet people in the boat while 
awake, and became peace-breakers only when 
others ceased to be so, breathing tumult out of 
their repose. Would it were possible to afBx a 
wind-instrument to the nose, and thus make 
melody of a snore, so that a sleeping lover might 
serenade his mistress or a congregation snore a 
psalm-tune ! Other, though fainter, sounds than 
these contributed to my restlessness. My head was 
close to the crimson curtain, — the sexual division 
of the boat, — behind which I continually heard 
whispers and stealthy footsteps ; the noise of a 
comb laid on the table or a slipper dropped on 
the floor ; the twang, like a broken harp-string, 
caused by loosening a tight belt ; the rustling of 
a gown in its descent ; and the unlacing of a pair 



240 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

of stays. My ear seemed to have the properties 
of an eye ; a visible image pestered my fancy in 
the darkness ; the curtain was withdrawn between 
me and the Western lady, who yet disrobed her- 
self without a blush. 

Finally all was hushed in that quarter. Still I 
was more broad awake than through the whole 
preceding day, and felt a feverish impulse to toss 
my limbs miles apart and appease the unquietness 
of mind by that of matter. Forgetting that my 
berth was hardly so wide as a coffin, I turned 
suddenly over and fell like an avalanche on the 
floor, to the disturbance of the whole community 
of sleepers. As there were no bones broken, I 
blessed the accident and went on deck. A lantern 
was burning at each end of the boat, and one of 
the crew was stationed at the bows, keeping watch, 
as mariners do on the ocean. Though the rain 
had ceased, the sky was all one cloud, and the 
darkness so intense that there seemed to be no 
world except the little space on which our lanterns 
glimmered. Yet it was an impressive scene. 

We were traversing the " long leveU' a dead 
flat between Utica and Syracuse, where the canal 
has not rise or fall enough to require a lock for 
nearly seventy miles. There can hardly be a 
more dismal tract of country. The forest which 
covers it, consisting chiefly of white-cedar, black- 
ash, and other trees that live in excessive moisture, 
is now decayed and death-struck by the partial 
draining of the swamp into the great ditch of 
thecanal. Sometimes, indeed, our lights were 
reflected from pools of stagnant water which 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 241 

Stretched far in among the trunks of the trees^ 
beneath dense masses of dark foliage. But gen- 
erally the tall stems and intermingled branches 
were naked^ and brought into strong rehef amid 
the surrounding gloom by the whiteness of their 
decay. Often we beheld the prostrate form of 
some old sylvan giant which had fallen and 
crushed down smaller trees under its immense ruin. 
In spots where destruction had been riotous, the 
lanterns showed perhaps a hundred trunks, erect^ 
half overthrown, extended along the ground, rest- 
ing on their shattered limbs or tossing them 
desperately into the darkness, but all of one ashy 
white, all naked together, in desolate confusion. 
Thus growing out of the night as we drew nigh^ 
and vanishing as we glided on, based on obscurity^ 
and overhung and bounded by it, the scene was 
ghostlike, — the very land of unsubstantial things^ 
whither dreams might betake themselves when 
they quit the slumberer's brain. 

My fancy found another emblem. The wild 
nature of America had been driven to this desert- 
place by the encroachments of civilized man. 
And even here, where the savage queen was 
throned on the ruins of her empire, did we pene- 
trate, a vulgar and worldly throng, intruding on 
her latest solitude. In other lands decay sits 
among fallen palaces ; but here her home is in 
the forests. 

Looking ahead, I discerned a distant light, an- 
nouncing the approach of another boat, which 
soon passed us, and proved to be a rusty old scow, 
—just such a craft as the '' Flying Dutchman" 
16 



242 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

would navigate on the canal. Perhaps it was 
that celebrated personage himself whom I im- 
perfectly distinguished at the helm in a glazed 
cap and rough great-coat, with a pipe in his 
saouth, leaving the fumes of tobacco a hundred 
yards behind. Shortly after our boatman blew a 
horn, sending a long and melancholy note through 
the forest avenue, as a signal for some watcher 
in the wilderness to be ready with a change of 
horses. We had proceeded a mile or two with 
our fresh team when the tow-rope got entangled 
in a fallen branch on the edge of the canal, and 
caused a momentary delay, during which I went 
to examine the phosphoric light of an old tree a 
little within the forest. It was not the first de- 
lusive radiance that I had followed. 

The tree lay along the ground, and was wholly 
converted into a mass of diseased splendor, which 
threw a ghastliness around. Being full of conceits 
that night, I called it a frigid fire, a funeral light, 
illumining decay and death, an emblem of fame 
that gleams around the dead man without warm- 
ing him, or of genius when it owes its brilliancy 
to moral rottenness, and w^as thinking that such 
ghostlike torches were just fit to light up this dead 
forest or to blaze coldly in tombs, when, starting 
from my abstraction, I looked up the canal. I 
recollected myself, and discovered the lanterns 
glimmering far away. 

*' Boat ahoy ! '' shouted I, making a trumpet of 
my closed fists. 

Though the cry must have rung for miles along 
that hollow passage of the woods, it produced no 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 243 

effect. These packet-boats make up for their 
snail-like pace by never loitering day nor nighty 
especially for those who have paid their fare. 
Indeed the captain had an interest in getting 
rid of me ; for I was his creditor for a break- 
fast. 

" They are gone, Heaven be praised ! " ejacu- 
lated I ; " for I cannot possibly overtake them. 
Here am I, on the * long level/ at midnight, with 
the comfortable prospect to walk to Syracuse, 
where my baggage will be left. And now to find 
a house or shed wherein to pass the night." So 
thinking aloud, I took a flambeau from the old 
tree, burning, but consuming not, to light my 
steps withal, and, like a jack-o'-the-lantern, set 
out on my midnight tour. 



a44 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



THE OLD APPLE-DEALER. 

The lover of the moral picturesque may some- 
times find what he seeks in a character which is 
nevertheless of too negative a description to be 
seized upon and represented to the imaginative 
vision by word-painting. As an instance, I re- 
member an old man who carries on a little trade 
of gingerbread and apples at the depot of one of 
our railroads. While awaiting the departure of 
the cars, my observation, flitting to and fro among 
tlie livelier characteristics of the scene, has often 
■settled insensibly upon this almost hueless object. 
Thus, unconsciously to myself and unsuspected 
by him, I have studied the old apple-dealer until 
he has become a naturalized citizen of my inner 
world. How little would he imagine — poor, neg- 
lected, friendless, unappreciated, and with little 
that demands appreciation — that the mental eye 
of an utter stranger has so often reverted to his 
figure ! Many a noble form, many a beautiful 
face, has flitted before me and vanished Hke a 
shadow. It is a strange witchcraft whereby this 
faded and featureless old apple-dealer has gained 
a settlement in my memory. 

He is a small man, with gray hair and gray 
stubble beard, and is invariably clad in a shabby 
surtout of snuff-color, closely buttoned, and half 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 245 

concealing a pair of gray pantaloons ; the whole 
dress, though clean and entire, being evidently 
flimsy with much wear. His face, thin, withered, 
furrowed, and with features which even age has 
failed to render impressive, has a frost-bitten 
aspect. It is a moral frost which no physical 
warmth or comfortableness could counteract. 
The summer sunshine may fling its white heat 
upon him or the good fire of the depot room may 
make him the focus of its blaze on a winter's 
day ; but all in vain ; for still the old man looks 
as if he were in a frosty atmosphere, with scarcely 
warmth enough to keep life in the region about 
his heart. It is a patient, long-suffering, quiet,, 
hopeless, shivering aspect. He is not desperate^ 
— that, though its etymology implies no. more, 
would be too positive an expression, — but merely 
devoid of hope. As all his past life, probably, 
offers no spots of brightness to his memory, so he 
takes his present poverty and discomfort as en- 
tirely a matter of course : he thinks it the defini- 
tion of existence, so far as himself is concerned, 
to be poor, cold, and uncomfortable. It may be 
added, that time has not thrown dignity as a 
mantle over the old man's figure : there is nothing 
venerable about him : you pity him without a 
scruple. 

He sits on a bench in the depot room ; and 
before him, on the floor, are deposited two bas- 
kets of a capacity to contain his whole stock in 
trade. Across from one basket to the other ex- 
tends a board, on which is displayed a plate of 
cakes and gingerbread, some russet and red- 



246 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

cheeked apples, and a box containing variegated 
sticks of candy, together with that delectable con- 
diment known by children as Gibraltar rock, 
neatly done up in white paper. There is likewise 
a half-peck measure of cracked walnuts and two 
or three tin half-pints or gills filled with the nut- 
kernels, ready for purchasers. Such are the 
small commodities with which our old friend 
comes daily before the world, ministering to its 
petty needs and little freaks of appetite, and 
seeking thence the solid subsistence — so far as 
he may subsist — of his life. 

A slight observer would speak of the old man's 
quietude; but, on closer scrutiny, you discover 
that there is a continual unrest within him, which 
somewhat resembles the fluttering action of the 
nerves in a corpse from which life has recently 
departed. Though he never exhibits any violent 
action, and, indeed, might appear to be sitting 
quite still, yet you perceive, when his minuter 
peculiarities begin to be detected, that he is 
always making some little movement or other. 
He looks anxiously at his plate of cakes or pyra- 
mid of apples and slightly alters their arrange- 
ment, with an evident idea that a great deal de- 
pends on their being disposed exactly thus and 
so. Then for a moment he gazes out of the win- 
dow ; then he shivers quietly and folds his arms 
across his breast, as if to draw himself closer 
within himself, and thus keep a flicker of warmth 
in his lonesome heart. Now he turns again to 
his merchandise of cakes, apples, and candy, and 
discovers that this cake or that apple, or yonder 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 247 

Stick of red and white candy, has somehow got 
out of its proper position. And is there not a 
walnut-kernel too many or too few in one of those 
small tin measures ? Again the whole arrange- 
ment appears to be settled to his mind ; but, in 
the course of a minute or two, there will assuredly 
be something to set right. At times, by an in- 
describable shadow upon his features, too quiet, 
however, to be noticed until you are familiar, 
wdth his ordinary aspect, the expression of frost- 
bitten, patient despondency becomes very touch- 
ing. It seems as if just at that instant the sus- 
picion occurred to him that, in his chill decline 
of life, earning scanty bread by selling cakes, 
apples, and candy, he is a very miserable old 
fellow. 

But, if he thinks so, it is a mistake. He can 
never suffer the extreme of misery, because the 
tone of his whole being is too much subdued for 
him to feel anything acutely. 

Occasionally one of the passengers, to while 
away a tedious interval, approaches the old man, 
inspects the articles upon his board, and even 
peeps curiously into the two baskets. Another, 
striding to and fro along the room, throws a look 
at the apples and gingerbread at every turn. A 
third, it may be of a more sensitive and delicate 
texture of being, glances shyly thitherward, cau- 
tious not to excite expectations of a purchaser 
while yet undetermined whether to buy. But 
there appears to be no need of such a scrupulous 
regard to our old friend's feelings. True he is 
conscious of the remote possibility to sell a cake 



248 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

or an apple ; but innumerable disappointments 
have rendered him so far a philosopher, that, even 
if the purchased article should be returned, he will 
consider it altogether in the ordinary train of 
events. He speaks to none, and makes no sign of 
offering his wares to the public : not that he is de- 
terred by pride, but by the certain conviction that 
such demonstrations would notincreasehis custom. 
Besides, this activity in business would require an 
energy that never could have been a characteristic 
of his almost passive disposition even in youth. 
Whenever an actual customer appears the old 
man looks up with a patient eye : if the price and 
the article are approved, he is ready to make 
change ; otherwise his eyelids droop again sadly 
enough, but with no heavier despondency than 
before. He shivers, perhaps folds his lean arms 
around his lean body, and resumes the life-long, 
frozen patience in which consists his strength. 
Once in a while a school-boy comes hastily up, 
places a cent or two upon the board, and takes up 
a cake, or stick of candy, or a measure of wal- 
nuts, or an apple as red-cheeked as himself. 
There are no words as to price, that being as well 
known to the buyer as to the seller. The old 
apple-dealer never speaks an unnecessary word : 
not that he is sullen and morose ; but there is 
none of the cheeriness and briskness in him that 
stirs up people to talk. 

Not seldom he is greeted by some old neighbor, 
a man well to do in the world, who makes a civil, 
patronizing observation about the weather ; and 
then, by way of performing a charitable deed, be* 



MOSSES FROM AI^ OLD MANSE, 249 

gins to chaffer for an apple. Our friend presumes 
not on any past acquaintance ; he makes the brief- 
est possible response to all general remarks, and 
shrinks quietly into himself again. After every 
diminution of his stock he takes care to produce 
from the basket another cake, another stick of 
candy, another apple, or another measure of wal- 
nuts, to supply the place of the article sold. Two 
or threeattempts- or, perchance, half a dozen— are 
requisite before the board can be rearranged to 
his satisfaction. If he has received a silver coin, 
he waits till the purchaser is out of sight, then 
examines it cldsely, and tries to bend it with his 
finger and thumb : finally he puts it into his 
waistcoat-pocket with seemingly a gentle sigh. 
This sigh, so faint as to be hardly perceptible, 
and not expressive of any definite emotion, is th^ 
accompaniment and conclusion of all his actions. 
It is the symbol of the chillness and torpid mel- 
ancholy of his old age, which only make them- 
selves felt sensibly when his repose is slightly 
disturbed. 

Our man of gingerbread and apples is not a 
specimen of the " needy man who has seen better 
days." Doubtless there have been better and 
brighter days in the far-off time of his youth; 
but none with so much sunshine of prosperity in 
them that the chill, the depression, the narrowness 
of means, in his declining years, can have come 
upon him by. surprise. His life has all been of a 
piece. His subdued and nerveless boyhood pre- 
figured his abortive prime which likewise contained 
within itself the prophecy and image of his lean 



250 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

and torpid age. He was perhaps a mechanic, 
who never came to be a master in his craft or a 
petty tradesman, rubbing onward between pass- 
able to do and poverty. Possibly he may look 
back to some brilliant epoch of his career when 
there were a hundred or two of dollars to his 
credit in the Savings Bank. Such must have been 
the extent of his better fortune, — his little measure 
of this world's triumphs, — all that he has known 
of success. A meek, downcast, humble, uncon- 
plaining creature, he probably has never felt 
himself entitled to more than so much of the gifts 
of Providence. Is it not still something that he 
has never held out his hand for charity, nor has 
yet been driven to that sad home and household 
of Earth's forlorn and broken-spirited children, 
the almshouse ? He cherishes no quarrel, there- 
fore, with his destiny, nor with the Author of it. 
All is as it should be. 

If, indeed, he have been bereaved of a son, a 
bold, energetic, vigorous young man, on whom 
the father's feeble nature leaned as on a staff of 
strength, in that case he may have felt a bitter- 
ness that could not otherwise have been gen- 
erated in his heart. But methinks the joy of 
possessing such a son and the agony of losing 
him would have developed the old man's moral 
and intellectual nature to a much greater degree 
than we now find it. Intense gri^f appears to be 
as much out of keeping with his life as fervid 
happiness. 

To confess the truth, it is not the easiest mat- 
ter in the world to define and individualize a 



MOSSES FROM AiV OLD MANSE. 251 

character like this which we are now handling. 
The portrait must be so generally negative that 
the most delicate pencil is likely to spoil it by 
introducing some too positive tint. Every touch 
must be kept down, or else you destroy the sub- 
dued tone which is absolutely essential to the 
whole effect. Perhaps more may be done by 
contrast than by direct description. For this 
purpose I make use of another cake and candy 
merchant, who likewise infests the railroad depot. 
This latter worthy is a very smart and well- 
dressed boy of ten years old or thereabouts, who 
skips briskly hither and thither, addressing the 
passengers in a pert voice, yet with somewhat of 
good breeding in his tone and pronunciation. 
Now he has caught my eye, and skips across the 
room with a gretty pertness, which I should like 
to correct with a box on the ear. " Any cake, 
sir ? any candy .^ " 

No, none for me, my lad. I did but glance at 
your brisk figure in order to catch a reflected 
light and throw it upon your old rival yonder. 

Again, in order to invest my conception of the 
old man with a more decided sense of reality, I 
look at him in the very moment of intensest bus- 
tle, on the arrival of the cars. The shriek of the 
engine as it rushes into the car-house is the ut- 
terance of the steam fiend, whom man has sub- 
dued by magic spells and compels to serve as a 
beast of burden. He has skimmed rivets in his 
headlong rush, dashed through forests, plunged 
into the hearts of mountains, and glanced from 
the city to the desert-place, and again to a far-off, 



252 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

city, with a meteoric progress, seen and out of 
sight, while his reverberating roar still fills the 
ear. The travellers swarm forth from the cars. 
All are full of the momentum which they have 
caught from their mode of conveyance. It seems 
as if the whole world, both morally and physi- 
cally, were detached from its old standfasts and 
set in rapid motion. And, in the midst df this 
terrible activity, there sits the old man of ginger- 
bread, so subdued, so hopeless, so without a stake 
in life, and yet not positively miserable, — there he 
sits, the forlorn old creature, one chill and som- 
bre day after another, gathering scanty coppers 
for his cakes, apples, and candy, — there sits the 
old apple-dealer, in his threadbare suit of snuff- 
color and gray and his grizzly stubble beard. 
See ! he folds his lean arms around his lean 
figure with that quiet sigh and that scarcely per- 
ceptible shiver which are the tokens of his in- 
w^ard state. I have him now. He and the steam 
fiend are each other's antipodes; the latter is 
the type of all that go ahead, and the old man 
the representative of that melancholy class who 
by some sad witchcraft are doomed never to 
share in the world's exulting progress. Thus the 
contrast between mankind and this desolate 
brother becomes picturesque, and even sublime. 
And now farewell, old friend ! Little do you 
suspect that a student of human life has made 
your character the theme of more than one soli- 
tary and thoughtful hour. Many would say that 
you have hardly individuality enough to be the 
object of your own self-love. How, then, can a 



MOSSES FROM AN' OLD MANSE. 253 

stranger's eye detect anything in your mind and 
heart to study and to wonder at ? Yet, could I 
read but a tithe of what is written there, it would 
be a volume of deeper and more comprehensive 
import than all that the wisest mortals have given 
to the world ; for the soundless depths of the 
human soul and of eternity have an opening 
through your breast. God be praised, were it 
only for your sake, that the present shapes of 
human existence are not cast in iron nor hewn 
in everlasting adamant, but moulded of the vapors 
that vanish away while the essence flits upward 
to the infinite. There is a spiritual essence in 
this gray and lean old shape that shall flit upward 
too. Yes ; doubtless there is a region where the 
lifelong shiver will pass away from his being, 
and that quiet sigh, which it has taken him so 
many years to breathe, will be brought to a close 
for good and all. 



354 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 

An elderly man, with his pretty daughter on 
his arm, was passing along the street, and emerged 
from the gloom of the cloudy evening into the 
light that fell across the pavement from the 
window of a small shop. It was a projecting 
window ; and on the inside were suspended a 
variety of watches, pinchbeck, silver, and one or 
two of gold, all with their faces turned from the 
street, as if churlishly disinclined to inform the 
wayfarers what o'clock it was. Seated within 
the shop, sidelong to the window, with his pale 
face bent earnestly over some delicate piece of 
mechanism on which was thrown the concentrated 
lustre of a shade-lamp, appeared a young man. 

'' What can Owen Warland be about .^ " mut- 
tered old Peter Hovenden, himself a retired 
watchmaker and the former master of this same 
young man whose occupation he was now won- 
dering at. "What can the fellow be about .'^ 
These six months past I have never come by his 
shop without seeing him just as steadily at work 
as now. It would be a flight beyond his usual 
foolery to seek for the perpetual motion ; and yet 
I know enough of my old business to be certain 
that what he is now so busy with is no part of the 
machinery of a watch." 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 255 

" Perhaps, father/' said Annie, without showing 
much interest in the question, *' Owen is invent- 
ing a new kind of timekeeper. I am sure he has 
ingenuity enough/' 

" Poh, child ! He has not the sort of ingenuity 
to invent anything better than a Dutch toy," an- 
swered her father, who had formerly been put to 
much vexation by Owen Warland's irregular 
genius. " A plague on such ingenuity ! All the 
effect that ever I knew of it was, to spoil the 
accuracy of some of the best watches in my shop. 
He would turn the sun out of its orbit and 
derange the whole course of time, if, as I said be- 
fore, his ingenuity could grasp anything bigger 
than a child's toy." 

" Hush, father ! He hears you ! " whispered 
Annie, pressing the old man's arm, "His ears 
are as delicate as his feelings ; and you know 
how easily disturbed they are. Do let us move 
on." 

So Peter Hovenden and his daughter Annie 
plodded on without further conversation, until in 
a by-street of the town they found themselves 
passing the open door of a blacksmith's shop. 
Within was seen the forge, now blazing up and 
illuminating the high and dusky roof, and now 
confining its lustre to a narrow precinct of the 
coal-strewn floor, according as the breath of the 
bellows was puffed forth or again inhaled into its 
vast leathern lungs. In the intervals of bright- 
ness it was easy to distinguish objects in remote 
corners of the shop and the horseshoes that hung 
upon the wall ; in the momentary gloom the fir^ 



2S5 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

seemed to be glimmering amidst the vagueness 
of unenclosed space. Moving about in this red 
glare and alternate dusk was the figure of the 
blacksmith, well worthy to be viewed in so 
picturesque an aspect of light and shade, where 
the bright blaze struggled with the black night, 
as if each would have snatched his comely- 
strength from the other. Anon he drew a white- 
hot bar of iron from the coals, laid it on the 
anvil, uplifted his arm of might, and was soon 
enveloped in the myriads of sparks which the 
strokes of his hammer scattered into the sur- 
rounding gloom. 

" Now, that is a pleasant sight," said the old 
watchmaker. " I know what it is to work in 
gold ; but give me the worker in iron after all is 
said and done. He spends his labor upon a 
reality. What say you, daughter Annie 1 '' 

" Pray don't speak so loud, father," whispered 
Annie. " Robert Danforth will hear you." 

" And what if he should hear me } " said Peter 
Hovenden. '' I say again, it is a good and a 
v^holesome thing to depend upon main strength 
and reality, and to earn one's bread with the bare 
and brawny arm of a blacksmith. A watchmaker 
gets his brain puzzled by his wheels within a 
wheel, or loses his health or the nicety of his eye- 
sight, as was my case, and finds himself at middle 
age, or a little after, past labor at his own trade, 
and fit for nothing else, yet too poor to live at 
his ease. So I say once again, give me main 
strength for my money. And then, how it takes 
the nonsense out of a man 1 Did you ever hear 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



2S7 



of a blacksmith being such a fool as Owen War- 
land yonder ? " 

*' Well said, Uncle Hovenden ! " shouted Rob- 
ert Danforth from the forge, in a full, deep, merry 
voice, that made the roof re-echo. "And what 
says Miss Annie to that doctrine ? She, I sup- 
pose, will think it a genteeler business to tinker 
up a lady's watch than to forge a horseshoe or 
make a gridiron." 

Annie drew her father onward without giving 
him time for reply. 

But we must return to Owen Warland's shop, 
and spend more meditation upon his history and 
character than either Peter Hovenden, or prob- 
ably his daughter Annie, or Owen's old school- 
fellow, Robert Danforth, would have thought due 
to so slight a subject. From the time that his 
little fingers could- grasp a penknife, Owen had 
been remarkable for a delicate ingenuity, w^hich 
sometimes produced pretty shapes in wood, prin- 
cipally figures of flowers and birds, and sometimes 
seemed to aim at the hidden mysteries of mech- 
anism. But it was always for purposes of grace, 
and never with any mockery of the useful. He 
did not, like the crowd of school-boy artisans, 
.construct little windmills on the angle of a barn 
or water-mills across the neighboring brook. 
Those who discovered such peculiarity in the boy 
as to think it worth their while to observe him 
closely, sometimes saw reason to suppose that he 
was attempting to imitate the beautiful move- 
ments of nature as exemplified in the flight of 
birds or the activity of little animals. It seemed, 
17 



258 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

in fact, a new development of the love of the 
beautiful, such as might have made him a poet, a 
painter, or a sculptor, and which was as com 
pletely refined from all utilitarian coarseness as it 
could have been in either of the fine arts. He 
looked with singular distaste at the stiff and regu- 
lar processes of ordinary machinery. Being once 
carried to see a steam-engine, in the expectation 
that his intuitive comprehension of mechanical 
principles would be gratified, he turned pale and 
grew sick, as if something monstrous and un- 
natural had been presented to him. This horror 
was partly owing to the size and terrible energy 
of the iron laborer ; for the character of Owen's 
mind was microscopic, and tended naturally to 
the minute, in accordance with his diminutive 
frame and the marvellous smallness and delicate 
power of his fingers. Not that his sense of 
beauty was thereby diminished into a sense of 
prettiness. The beautiful idea has no relation to 
size, and may be as perfectly developed in a 
space too minute for any but microscopic investi- 
gation as within the ample verge that is measured 
by the arc of the rainbow. But, at all events, 
this characteristic minuteness in his objects and 
accomplishments made the world even more in- 
capable than it might otherwise have been of ap- 
preciating Owen Warland's genius. The boy's. 
relatives saw nothing better to be done, — as per- 
haps there was not, — than to bind him apprentice 
to a watchmaker, hoping that his strange ingenu- 
ity might thus be regulated and put to utilitarian 
purposes. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



259 



Peter Hovenden's opinion of his apprentice 
has already been expressed. He could make 
nothing of the lad. Owen's apprehension of the 
professional mysteries, it is true, was inconceiv- 
ably quick ; but he altogether forgot or despised 
the grand object of a watchmaker's business, and 
cared no more for the measurement of time than 
if it had been merged into eternity. So long, 
however, as he remained under his old master's 
care, Owen's lack of sturdiness made it possible, 
by strict injunctions and sharp oversight, to re- 
strain his creative eccentricity wdthin bounds ; 
but when his apprenticeship was served out, and 
he had taken the little shop which Peter Hoven- 
den's failing eyesight compelled him to relinquish, 
then did people recognize how unfit a person was 
Owen Warland to lead old blind Father Time 
along his daily course. One of his most rational 
projects was to connect a musical operation with 
the machinery of his watches, so that all the 
harsh dissonances of life might be rendered tune- 
ful, and each flitting moment fall into the abyss 
of the past in golden drops of harmony. If a 
family clock was intrusted to him for repair, — • 
one of those tall, ancient clocks that have grown 
nearly allied to human nature by measuring out 
the lifetime of many generations, — he would take 
upon himself to arrange a dance or funeral pro- 
cession of figures across its venerable face, rep- 
resenting twelve mirthful or melancholy hours. 
Several freaks of this kind quite destroyed the 
young watchmaker's credit with that steady and 
matter-of-fact class of people who hold the opinion 



26o ' MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

that time is not to be trifled with, whether con- 
sidered as the medium of advancement and pros- 
perity in this world or preparation for the next. 
His custom rapidly diminished, — a misfortune, 
however, that was probably reckoned among his 
better accidents by Owen Warland, who was 
becoming more and more absorbed in a secret 
occupation which drew all his science and manual 
dexterity into itself, and likewise gave full em- 
ployment to the characteristic tendencies of his 
genius. This pursuit had already consumed many 
months. 

After the old watchmaker and his pretty daugh- 
ter had gazed at him out of the obscurity of the 
street, Owen Warland was seized with a fluttering 
of the nerves, which made his hand tremble too 
violently to proceed with such delicate labor as 
he was now engaged upon. 

" It was Annie herself ! '' murmured he. " I 
should have known it, by this throbbing of my 
heart, before I heard her father's voice. Ah, how 
it throbs ! I shall scarcely be able to work again 
on this exquisite mechanism to-night. Annie ! 
dearest Annie ! thou shouldst give firmness to my 
heart and hand, and not shake them thus ; for, if 
I strive to put the very spirit of beauty into form 
and give it motion, it is for thy sake alone. O 
throbbing heart, be quiet ! If my labor be thus 
thwarted, there will come vague and unsatisfied 
dreams, which will leave me spiritless to-mor- 
row.'' 

As he was endeavoring to settle himself again 
to his task, the shop-door opened and gave admit 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 26 1 

tance to no other than the stalwart figure which 
Peter Hovenden had paused to admire, as seen 
amid the light and shadow of the blacksmith's shop. 
Robert Danforth had brought a little anvil of his 
own manufacture, and peculiarly constructed, 
which the young artist had recently bespoken. 
Owen examined the article, and pronounced it 
fashioned according to his wish. 

" Why, yes," said Robert Danforth, his strong 
voice filling the shop as with the sound of a bass- 
viol, " I consider myself equal to anything in the 
way of my own trade ; though I should have 
made but a poor figure at yours with such a fi.st 
as this," added he, laughing, as he laid his vast 
hand beside the delicate one of Owen. " But 
what then ? ' 1 put more main strength into one 
blow of my sledge-hammer than all that you have 
expended since you were a 'prentice. Is not that 
the truth ? " 

" Very probably," answered the low and slender 
voice of Owen. " Strength is an earthly monster. 
I make no pretensions to it. My force, whatever 
there may be of it, is altogether spiritual." 

" Well, but, Owen, what are you about ? " asked 
his old schoolfellow, still in such a hearty volume 
of tone that it made the artist shrink, especially 
as the question related to a subject so sacred as 
the absorbing dream of his imagination. " Folks 
do say that you are trying to discover the per- 
petual motion." 

** The perpetual motion ? Nonsense ! " replied 
Owen Warland, with a movement of disgust ; for 
he was full of little petulances. " It can never 



262 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

be discovered. It is a dream that may delude 
men whose brains are mystified with matter, but 
not me. Besides, if such a discovery were possi- 
ble, it would not be worth my while to make it 
only to have the secret turned to such purposes 
as are now effected by steam and water power. 
I am not ambitious to be honored with the pater- 
nity of a new kind of cotton-machine." 

" That would be droll enough ! " cried the 
blacksmith, breaking out into such an uproar of 
laughter that Owen himself and the bell-glasses 
on his workboard quivered in unison. *' No, no, 
Owen ! No child of yours will have iron joints 
and sinews. Well, I won't hinder you any more. 
Good-night, Owen, and success ; and if you need 
any assistance, so far as a downright blow of 
hammer upon anvil will answer the purpose, I'm 
your man." 

And with another laugh the man of main 
strength left the shop. 

" How strange it is," whispered Owen Warland 
to himself, leaning his head upon his hand, ** that 
all my musings, my purposes, my passion for 
the beautiful, my consciousness of power to create 
it, — a finer, more ethereal power, of which this 
earthly giant can have no conception, — all, all, 
look so vain and idle whenever my path is crossed 
by Robert Danforth ! He would drive me mad 
were I to meet him often. His hard, brute force 
darkens and confuses the spiritual element with- 
in me-; but I, too, will be strong in my own way. 
I will not yield to him." 

He took from beneath a glass a piece of minute 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 263 

machinery, which he set in the condensed light 
of his lamp, and, looking intently at it through 
a magnifying-glass, proceeded to operate with a 
delicate instrument of steel. In an instant, how- 
ever, he fell back in his chair and clasped his 
hands, with a look of horror on his face that 
made its small features as impressive as those of 
a giant would have been. 

"Heaven! What have I done?" exclaimed 
he. "The vapor, the influence of that brute 
force, — it has bewildered me and obscured my 
perception. I have made the very stroke, — the 
fatal stroke, — that I have dreaded from the first. 
It is all over, — the toil of months, the object of 
my life. I am ruined ! " 

And there he sat, in strange despair, until his 
lamp flickered in the socket and left the Artist of 
the Beautiful in darkness. 

Thus it is that ideas, which grow up within the 
imagination and appear so lovely to it and of a 
value beyond whatever men call valuable, are ex- 
posed to be shattered and annihilated by contact 
with the practical. It is requisite for the ideal 
artist to possess a force of character that seems 
hardly compatible with its delicacy ; he must 
keep his faith in himself while the incredulous 
world assails him with its utter disbelief ; he 
must stand up against mankind and be his own 
sole disciple, both as respects his genius and 
the objects to which it is directed. 

For a time Owen Warland succumbed to this 
severe but inevitable test. He spent a few slug- 
gish weeks with his head so continually resting in 



264 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

his hands that the townspeople had scarcely an 
opportunity to see his countenance. When at last 
it was again uplifted to the light of day, a coid, 
dull, nameless change was perceptible upon it. 
In the opinion of Peter Hovenden, however, and 
that order of sagacious understandings, who think 
that life should be regulated, like clock-work, 
with leaden weights, the alteration was entirely 
for the better. Owen now, indeed, applied him- 
self to business with dogged industry. It was 
marvellous to witness the obtuse gravity with 
which he would inspect the wheels of a great old 
silver watch ; thereby delighting the owner, in 
whose fob it had been worn till he deemed it a 
portion of his own life, and was accordingly 
jealous of its treatment. In consequence of the 
good report thus acquired, Owen Warland was 
invited by the proper authorities to regulate the 
clock in the church-steeple. He succeeded so 
admirably in this matter of public interest, that 
the merchants gruffly acknowledged his merits on 
'Change ; the nurse whispered his praises as she 
gave the potion in the sick-chamber ; the lover 
blessed him jt the hour of appointed interview ; 
and the town in general thanked Owen for the 
punctuality of dinner-time. In a word, the heavy 
weight upon his spirits kept everything in order, 
not merely within his own system, but wheresover 
the iron accents of the church-clock were audible. 
It was a circumstance, though minute yet char- 
acteristic of his present state, that, when em- 
ployed to engrave names or initials on silver 
spoons, he now wrote the requisite letters in the 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 265 

plainest possible style, omitting a variety of 
fanciful flourishes that had heretofore distin- 
guished his work in this kind. 

One day, during the era of this happy trans- 
formation, old Peter Hovenden came to visit his 
former apprentice. 

"Well, Owen," said he, " I am glad to hear 
such good accounts of you from all quarters, and 
especially from the town-clock yonder, wdiich 
speaks in your commendation every hour of the 
twenty-four. Only get rid altogether of your 
nonsensical trash about the beautiful, which I nor 
nobody else, nor yourself to boot, could ever 
understand, — only free yourself of that, and your 
success in life is as sure as daylight. Why, if 
you go on in this way, I should even venture to 
let you doctor this precious old watch of mine; 
though, except my daughter Annie, I have noth- 
ing else so valuable in the world." 

" I should hardly dare touch it, sir," replied 
Owen, in a depressed tone ; for he was weighed 
down by his old master's presence. 

" In time," said the latter, — " in time, you will 
be capable of it." 

The old watchmaker, with the freedom natu- 
rally consequent on his former authority, went on 
inspecting the work which Owen had in hand at 
the moment, together with other matters that were 
in progress. The artist, meanwhile, could scarcely 
lift his head. There was nothing so antipodal to 
his nature as this man's cold, unimaginative sa- 
gacity, by contact wdth which everything was con* 
verted into a dream except the densest matter of 



266 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

the physical world. Owen groaned in spirit and 
prayed fervently to be delivered from him. 

" But what is this .? '' cried Peter Hovenden, 
abruptly, taking up a dusty bell-glass, beneath 
which appeared a mechanical something, as del- 
icate and minute as the system of a butterfly's 
anatomy. " What have we here ? Owen ! Owen ! 
there is witchcraft in these little chains, and 
wheels, and paddles. See ! with one pinch of my 
finger and thumb I am going to deliver you from 
all future peril." 

**For Heaven's sake," screamed Owen War- 
land, springing up with w^onderful energy, " as 
you would not drive me mad, do not touch it ! 
The slightest pressure of your finger would ruin 
me forever." 

" Aha, young man ! And is it so ? " said the 
old watchmaker, looking at him with just enough 
of penetration to torture Owen's soul with the 
bitterness of worldly criticism. " Well, take your 
own course ; but I warn you again that in this 
small piece of mechanism lives your evil spirit. 
Shall T exorcise him ? " 

" You are my evil spirit," answered Owen, 'much 
excited, — ** you and the hard, coarse world ! The 
leaden thoughts and the despondency that you 
fling upon me are my clogs, else I should long 
ago have achieved the task that I was created 
for." 

Peter Hovenden shook his head, with the mix- 
ture of contempt and indignation which mankind, 
of whom he was partly a representative, deem 
themselves entitled to feel towards all simpletons 



MOSSES FROM A AT OLD MANSE. 267 

who seek other prizes than the dusty one along 
the highway. He then took his leave, with an 
uplifted finger and a sneer upon his face that 
haunted the artist's dreams for many a night after- 
wards. At the time of his old master's visit, 
Owen was probably on the point of taking up the 
relinquished task ; but, by this sinister event, he 
was thrown back into the state whence he had 
been slowly emerging. 

But the innate tendency of his soul had only 
been accumulating fresh vigor during its apparent 
sluggishness. As the summer advanced he almost 
totally relinquished his business, and permitted 
Father Time, so far as the old gentleman was 
represented by the clocks and watches under his 
control, to stray at random through human life, 
making infinite confusion among the train of be- 
wildered hours. He wasted the sunshine, as peo- 
ple said, in wandering through the woods and 
fields and along the banks of streams. There, 
like a child, he found amusement in chasing but- 
terflies or watching the motions of water-insects. 
There was something truly mysterious in the in- 
tentness with which he contemplated these living 
playthings as they sported on the breeze or ex- 
amined the structure of an imperial insect whom 
he had imprisoned. The chase of butterflies was 
an apt emblem of the ideal pursuit in which he 
had spent so many golden hours ; but would the 
beautiful idea ever be yielded to his hand like 
the butterfly that symbolized it? Sweet, doubt- 
less, were these days, and congenial to the artist's 
soul. They were full of bright conceptions, which 



268 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

gleamed through his intellectual world as the but- 
terflies gleamed through the outward atmosphere, 
and were real to him, for the instant, without the 
toil, and perplexity, and many disappointments of 
attempting to make them visible to the sensual 
eye. Alas that the artist, whether in poetry or 
whatever other material, may not content himself 
with the inward enjoyment of the beautiful, but 
must chase the flitting mystery beyond the verge 
of his ethereal domain, and crush its frail being 
in seizing it with a material grasp. Owen War- 
land felt the impulse to give external reality to 
his ideas as irresistibly as any of the poets or 
painters who have arrayed the world in a dimmer 
and fainter beauty, imperfectly copied from the 
richness of their visions. 

The night was now his time for the slow prog- 
ress of .re-creating the one idea to which all his 
intellectual activity referred itself. Always at 
the approach of dusk he stole into the town, 
locked himself within his shop, and wrought with 
patient delicacy of touch for many hours. Some- 
times he was startled by the rap of the watch- 
man, who, when all the world should be asleep, 
had caught the gleam of lamplight through the 
crevices of Owen Warland's shutters. Day- 
light, to the morbid sensibility of his mind, 
seemed to have an intrusiveness that interfered 
with his pursuits. On cloudy and inclement 
days, therefore, he sat with his head upon his 
hands, muffling, as it were, his sensitive brain in 
a mist of indefinite musings ; for it was a relief 
to escape from the sharp distinctness with which 



ilIOSSES FROM AJSr OLD MANSE. 269 

he was compelled to shape out his thoughts 
during his nightly toil. 

From one of these fits of torpor he was aroused 
by the entrance of Annie Hovenden, who came 
into the shop with the freedom of a customer and 
also with something of the familiarity of a childish 
friend. She had worn a hole through her silver 
thimble, and wanted Owen to repair it. 

" But I don't know whether you will conde- 
scend to such a task/' said she, laughing, ** now 
that you are so taken up with the notion of 
putting spirit into machinery.'' 

** Where did you get that idea, Annie ? " said 
Owen, starting in surprise. 

" O, out of my own head," answered she ; 
"and from something that I heard you say, long 
ago, when you were .but a boy and I a little child. 
But come ; will you mend this poor thimble of 
mine ? " 

" Anything for your sake, Annie," said Owen 
Warland, — " anything, even were it to work at 
Robert Danforth's forge." 

"And that would be a pretty sight ! " retorted 
Annie, glancing with imperceptible slightness at 
the artist's small and slender frame. " Well ; 
here is the thimble." 

" But that is a strange idea of yours," said 
Owen, " about the spiritualization of matter." 

And then the thought stole into his mind that 
this young girl possessed the gift to comprehend 
him better than all the world besides. And 
what a help and strength would it be to him in 
his lonely toil if he could gain the sympathy of 



270 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

the only being whom he loved ! To persons 
whose pursuits are insulated from the common 
business of life, — who are either in advance of 
mankind or apart from it, — there often comes a 
sensation of moral cold that makes the spirit 
shiver as if it had reached the frozen solitudes 
around the pole. What the prophet, the poet^ 
the reformer, the criminal, or any other man with 
human yearnings, but separated from the multi- 
tude by a peculiar lot, might feel, poor Owen 
Warland felt. 

** Annie,'' cried he, growing pale as death at 
the thought, "how gladly would I tell you the 
secret of my pursuit ! You, methinks, would 
estimate it rightly. You, I know, would hear it 
with a reverence that I must not expect from 
the harsh, material world." 

" Would I not ? to be sure I would ! " replied 
Annie Hovenden, lightly laughing. " Come ^ 
explain to me quickly what is the meaning of 
this little whirligig, so delicately wrought that it 
might be a plaything for Queen Mab. See ! I 
will put it in motion." 

'' Hold ! " exclaimed Owen,— '^ hold !" 

Annie had but given the slightest possible 
touch, with the point of a needle, to the same 
minute portion of complicated machinery which 
has been more than once mentioned, when the 
artist seized her by the wrist with a force that 
made her scream aloud. She was affrighted at 
the convulsion of intense rage and anguish that 
writhed across his features. The next instant he 
let his head sink upon his hands. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 271 

" Go, Annie," murmured he ; "I have deceived 
myself, and must suffer for it. I yearned for 
sympathy, and thought, and fancied and dreamed 
that you might give it me ; but you lack the 
talisman, Annie, that should admit you into my 
secrets. That touch has undone the toil of 
months and the thought of a lifetime ! It was not 
your fault, Annie ; but you have ruined me ! *' 

Poor Owen Warland ! He had indeed erred, 
yet pardonably ; for if any human spirit could 
have sufficiently reverenced the processes sa 
sacred in his eyes, it must have been a woman's. 
Even Annie Hovenden, possibly, might not have 
disappointed him had she been enlightened by 
the deep intelligence of love. 

The artist spent the ensuing winter in a way 
that satisfied any persons who had hitherto retained 
a hopeful opinion of him that he was, in truth, 
irrevocably doomed to inutility as regarded the 
world, and to an evil destiny on his own part. 
The decease of a relative had put him in pos- 
session of a small inheritance. Thus freed from 
the necessity of toil, and having lost the steadfast 
influence of a great purpose, — great, at least, to 
him, — he abandoned himself to habits from 
which it might have been supposed the mere 
delicacy of his organization would have availed 
to secure him. But, when the ethereal portion of 
a man of genius is obscured, the earthly part as- 
sumes an influence the more uncontrollable, be- 
cause the character is now thrown off the balance 
to which Providence had so nicely adjusted it, 
and which, in coarser natures, is adjusted by 



272 MOSSES FROM AN" OLD MANSE. 

some other method. Owen Warland made prooi 
of whatever show of bliss may be found in riot. 
He looked at the world through the golden me- 
dium of wine, and contemplated the visions that 
bubble up so gayly around the brim of the glass, 
and that people the air with shapes of pleasant 
madness, which so soon grow ghostly and forlorn. 
Even when this dismal and inevitable change had 
taken place, the young man might still have 
continued to quaff the cup of enchantments, 
though its vapor did but shroud life in gloom 
and fill the gloom with spectres that mocked at 
him. There was a certain irksomeness of spirit, 
which, being real, and the deepest sensation of 
which the artist was now conscious, was more in- 
tolerable than any fantastic miseries and horrors 
that the abuse of wine could summon up. In 
the latter case he could remember, even out of 
the midst of his trouble, that all was but a 
delusion ; in the former, the heavy anguish was 
his actual life. 

From this perilous state he was redeemed by an 
incident which more than one person witnessed, 
but of which the shrewdest could not explain or 
conjecture the operation on Owen Warland's 
mind. It was very simple. On a warm after- 
noon in spring, as the artist sat among his 
riotous companions with a glass of wine before 
him, a splendid butterfly flew in at the open 
window and fluttered about his head. 

" Ah," exclaimed Owen, who had drank freely, 
" are you alive again, child of the sun and play- 
mate of the summer breeze, after your dismal 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 273 

winter's nap ? Then it is time for me to be at 
work ! " 

And, leaving his unemptied glass upon the 
table, he departed, and was never known to sip 
another drop of wine. 

And now, again, he resumed his wanderings in 
the woods and fields. It might be fancied that 
the bright butterfly, which had come so spirit-like 
into the window as Owen sat with the rude revel- 
lers, w^as indeed a spirit commissioned to recall 
him to the pure, ideal life that had so etherealized 
him among men. It might be fancied that he 
went forth to seek this spirit in its sunny haunts ; 
for still, as in the summer-time gone by, he was 
seen to steal gently up wherever a butterfly had 
alighted, and lose himself in contemplation of it. 
When it took flight his eyes followed the winged 
vision, as if its airy track would show the path to 
heaven. But what could be the purpose of the 
unseasonable toil, which was again resumed, as 
the watchman knew by the lines of lamplight- 
through the crevices of Owen Warland's shut- 
ters ? The townspeople had one comprehensive 
explanation of all these singularities. Owen 
Warland had gone mad! How universally effica- 
cious — how satisfactory, too, and soothing to the 
injured sensibility of narrowness and dulness — is 
this easy method of accounting for whatever lies 
beyond the world's most ordinary scope ! From 
St. Paul's days down to our poor little Artist of 
the Beautiful, the same talisman had been ap- 
plied to the elucidation of all mysteries in the 
words or deeds of men who spoke or acted too 
t8 



274 MOSSES FROM AJSf OLD MANSE, 

wisely or too well. In Owen Warland's case the 
judgment of his townspeople may have been 
correct. Perhaps he was mad. The lack of 
sympathy — that contrast between himself and his 
neighbors which took away the restraint of ex- 
ample — was enough to make him so. Or possi- 
bly he had caught just so much of ethereal radi- 
ance as served to bewilder him, in an earthly 
sense, by its intermixture with the common day- 
light. 

One evening, when the artist had returned 
from a customary ramble and had just thrown 
the lustre of his lamp on the delicate piece of 
work so often interrupted, but still taken up again, 
as if his fate were embodied in its mechanism, he 
was surprised by the entrance of old Peter Hov- 
enden. Owen never met this man without a 
shrinking of the heart. Of all the world he was 
most terrible, by reason of a keen understanding 
which saw so distinctly what it did see, and dis- 
believed so uncompromisingly in what it could 
not see. On this occasion the old watchmaker 
had merely a gracious word or two to say. 

''' Owen, my lad," said he, "we must see you at 
my house to-morrow night.'' 

The artist began to mutter some excuse. 

" O, but it must be so," quoth Peter Hoven- 
den, " for the sake of the days when you were 
one of the household. What, my boy ! don't you 
know that my daughter Annie is engaged to 
Robert Danforth ? We are making an entertain- 
ment, in our humble way, to celebrate the event." 

" Ah ! " said Owen. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 275 

That little monosyllable was all he uttered ; its 
tone seemed cold and unconcerned to an ear like 
Peter Hovenden's ; and yet there was in it the 
stifled outcry of the poor artist's heart, which he 
compressed within him like a man holding down 
an evil spirit. One slight outbreak, however, im- 
perceptible to the old watchmaker, he allowed 
himself. Raising the instrument wdth which he 
was about to begin his work, he let it fall upon 
the little system of machinery that had, anew, 
cost him months of thought and toil. It was 
shattered by the strf)ke ! 

Owen Warland's story would have been no tol- 
erable representation of the troubled life of those 
who strive to create the beautiful, if, amid all other 
thwarting influences, love had not interposed to 
steal the cunning from his hand. Outwardly he 
had been no ardent or enterprising lover ; the 
career of his passion had confined its tumults 
and vicissitudes so entirely within the artist's im- 
agination, that Annie herself had scarcely more 
than a woman's intuitive perception of it ; but, in 
Owen's view, it covered the whole field of his 
life. Forgetful of the time when she had shown 
herself incapable of any deep response, he had 
persisted in connecting all his dreams of artisti- 
cal success with Annie's image ; she was the vis- 
ible shape in which the spiritual power that he 
worshipped, and on whose altar he hoped to lay 
a not unworthy offering, was made manifest to 
him. Of course he had deceived himself ; there 
were no such attributes in Annie Hovenden as 
his imagination had endowed her with. She, in 



276 MOSSES FROM A AT OLD MANSE, 

the aspect which she wore to his inward vision, 
was as much a creature of his own as the mys- 
terious piece of mechanism would be were it ever 
realized. Had he become convinced of his mis- 
take through the medium of successful love, — • 
had he won Annie to his bosom, and there be- 
held her fade from angel into ordinary woman, — 
the disappointment might have driven him back, 
with concentrated energy, upon his sole remain- 
ing object. -Qu the other hand, had he found 
Annie what he fancied, his lot would have 
been so rich in beauty that- out of its mere re- 
dundancy he might have wrought the beautiful 
into many a worthier type than he had toiled for ; 
but the guise in which his sorrow came to him, 
the sense that the angel of his life had been 
snatched away and given to a rude man of earth 
and iron, who could neither need nor appreciate 
her ministrations, — this was the very perversity 
of fate that makes human existence appear too 
absurd and contradictory to be the scene of one 
other hope or one other fear. There was noth- 
ing left for Owen Warland but to sit down like 
a man that had been stunned. 

He went through a fit of illness. After his 
recovery his small and slender frame assumed 
an obtuser garniture of flesh than it had ever be- 
fore worn. His thin cheeks became round ; his 
delicate little hand, so spiritually fashioned to 
achieve fairy task-work, grew plumper than the 
hand of a thriving infant. His aspect had a 
childishness such as might have induced a stran- 
ger to pat him on the head, — pausing, however, 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 277 

in the act, to wonder what manner of child was 
here. It was as if the spirit had gone out of him, 
leaving the body to flourish in a sort of vegetable 
existence. Not that Owen Warland was idiotic. 
He could talk, and not irrationally. Somewhat 
of a babbler, indeed, did people begin to think 
him ; for he was apt to discourse at wearisome 
length of marvels of mechanism that he had read 
about in books, but which he had learned to con- 
sider as absolutely fabulous. Among them he 
enumerated the Man of Brass, constructed by 
Albertus Magnus, and the Brazen Head of Friar 
Bacon ; and, coming down to later times, the au- 
tomata of a little coach and horses, which it was 
pretended had been manufactured for the Dau- 
phin of France; together with an insect that 
buzzed about the ear like a living fly, and yet 
was but a contrivance of minute steel springs. 
There was a- story, too, of a duck that waddled, 
and quacked, and ate ; though, had any honest 
citizen purchased it for dinner, he would have 
found himself cheated with the mere mechanical 
apparition of a duck. 

" But all these accounts," said Owen Warland, 
''' I am now satisfied are mere impositions." 

Then, in a mysterious way, he would con- 
fess that he once thought differently. In his 
idle and dreamy days he had considered it pos- 
sible, in a certain sense, to spiritualize machinery, 
and to combine with the new species of life and 
motion thus produced a beauty that should attain 
to the ideal which Nature has proposed to her- 
self in all her creatures, but has never taken 



278 MOSSES FROM A AT OLD MANSE. 

pains to realize. He seemed, however, to retain 
no very distinct perception either of the process 
of achieving this object or of the design itself. 

" I have thrown it all aside now/' he would 
say. " It was a dream such as young men are 
always mystifying themselves with. Now that I 
have acquired a little common-sense, it makes 
me laugh to think of it.'' 

Poor, poor and fallen Owen Warland ! These 
were the symptoms that he had ceased to be an in- 
habitant of the better sphere that lies unseen 
around us. He had lost his faith in the invisible, 
and now prided himself, as such unfortunates 
invariably do, in the wisdom which rejected 
much that even his eye could see, and trusted 
confidently in nothing but what his hand could 
touch. This is the calamity of men whose spirit- 
ual part dies out of them and leaves the grosser 
understanding to assimilate them more and 
more to the things of which alone it can take cog- 
nizance ; but in Owen Warland the spirit was 
not dead nor past away ; it only slept. 

How it awoke again is not recorded. Perhaps 
the torpid slumber was broken by a convulsive 
pain. Perhaps, as in a former instance, the but- 
terfly came and hovered about his head and re- 
inspired him, — as indeed this creature of the sun- 
shine had always a mysterious mission for the 
artist, — reinspired him with the former purpose 
of his life. Whether it were pain Or happiness 
that thrilled through his veins, his first impulse 
was to thank Heaven for rendering him again 
the being of thought, imagination, and keenest 
sensibility that he had long ceased to be. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 279 

" Now for my task," said he. " Never did I 
feel such strength for it as now." 

Yet, strong as he felt himself, he was incited 
to toil the more diligently by an anxiety lest 
death should surprise him in the midst of his 
labors. This anxiety, perhaps, is common to all 
men who set their hearts upon anything so high, 
in their own view of it, that life becomes of impor- 
tance only as conditional to its accomplishment. 
So long as we love life for itself, we seldom dread 
the losing it. When we desire life for the attain- 
ment of an object, we recognize the frailty of its 
texture. But, side by side with this sense of in- 
security, there is a vital faith in our invulnerabil- 
ity to the shaft of death while engaged in any 
task that seems assigned by Providence as our 
proper thing to do, and which the world would 
have cause to mourn for should we leave it unac- 
complished. ' Can the philosopher, big with the 
inspiration of an idea that is to reform mankind, 
believe that he is to be beckoned from this sensi- 
ble existence at the very instant when he is mus- 
tering his breath to speak the word of light? 
Should he perish so, the weary ages may pass 
away — the world's whole life-sand may fall drop 
by drop — before another intellect is prepared to 
develop the truth that might have been uttered 
then. But history affords many an example 
where the most precious spirit, at any particular 
•epoch manifested in human shape, has gone 
hence untimely, without space allowed him, so 
far as mortal judgment could discern, to per- 
form his mission on the earth. The prophet dies, 



28o MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

and the man of torpid heart and sluggish brain 
lives on. The poet leaves his song half sung, or 
finishes it beyond the scope of mortal ears, in a 
celestial choir. The painter — as Allston did — 
leaves half his conception on the canvas to sad- 
den us with its imperfect beauty, and goes to pict- 
ure forth the whole, if it be no irreverence to 
say so, in the hues of heaven. But rather such 
incomplete designs of this life will be perfected 
nowhere. This so frequent abortion of man's 
dearest projects must be taken as a proof that 
the deeds of earth, however etherealized by piety 
or genius, are without value, except as exercises 
and manifestations of the spirit. In heaven, all 
ordinary thought is higher and more melodious 
than Milton's song. Then, would he add another 
verse to any strain that he had left unfinished 
here ? 

But to return to Owen Warland. It was his 
fortune, good or ill, to achieve the purpose of his 
life. Pass we over a long space of intense 
thought, yearning effort, minute toil, and wasting 
anxiety, succeeded by an instant of solitary 
triumph : let all this be imagined ; and then be- 
hold the artist, on a winter evening, seeking 
admittance to Robert Danforth's fireside circle. 
There he found the man of iron, with his massive 
substance, thoroughly warmed and attempered 
by domestic influences. And there was Annie, 
too, now transformed into a matron, with much 
of her husband's plain and sturdy nature, but 
imbued, as Owen Warland still believed, with a 
finer grace, that might enable her to be the inter- 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 281 

preter between strength and beauty. It happened, 
likewise, that old Peter Hovenden was a guest 
this evening at his daughter's fireside ; and it 
was his well-remembered expression of keen, 
cold criticism that first encountered the artist's 
glance. 

*' My old friend Owen ! " cried Robert Dan- 
forth, starting up, and compressing the artist's 
delicate fingers within a hand that was accus- 
tomed to gripe bars of iron. " This is kind and 
neighborly to come to us at last. I was afraid 
your perpetual motion had bewitched you out of 
the remembrance of old times." 

'* We are glad to see yoU," said Annie, while a 
blush reddened her matronly cheek. " It was 
not like a friend to stay from us so long." 

*' Well, Owen," inquired the old watchmaker, 
as his first greeting, " how comes on the beauti- 
ful ? Have you created it at last ? " 

The artist did not immediately reply, being 
startled by the apparition of a young child of 
strength that was tumbling about on the carpet, 
— a little personage who had come mysteriously 
out of the infinite, but with something so sturdy 
and real in his composition that he seemed 
moulded out of the densest substance which earth 
could supply. This hopeful infant crawled to- 
wards the new-comer, and setting himself on end, 
as Robert Danforth expressed the posture, stared 
at Owen with a look of such sagacious observa- 
tion that the mother could not help exchanging a 
proud glance with her husband. But the artist 
was disturbed by the child's look, as imagining a 



282 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

resemblance between it and Peter Hovenden's 
habitual expression. He could have fancied that 
the old watchmaker was compressed into this 
baby shape, and looking out of those baby eyes, 
and repeating, as he now did, the malicious 
question : 

" The beautiful, Owen ! How comes on the 
beautiful ? Have you succeeded in creating the 
beautiful ? '' 

" I have succeeded,". replied the artist, with a 
momentary light of triumph in his eyes and a 
smile of sunshine, yet steeped in such depth oi 
thought that it was almost sadness. " Yes, my 
friends, it is the truth. I have succeeded." 

" Indeed ! " cried Annie, a look of maiden 
mirthfulness peeping out of her face again. 
"And is it lawful, now, to inquire what the secret 
is ? " 

" Surely ; it is to disclose it that I have come," 
answered Owen Warland. " You shall know, 
and see, and touch, and possess the secret ! 
For, Annie, — if by that name I may still address 
the friend of my boyish years, — Annie, it is for 
your bridal gift that I have wrought this spirit- 
ualized mechanism, this harmony of motion, this 
mystery of beauty. It comes late indeed ; but it 
is as we go onward in life, when objects begin to 
Jose their freshness of hue and our souls their 
delicacy of perception, that the spirit of beauty 
is most needed. If, — forgive me, Annie, — if you 
know how to value this gift, it can never come 
too late." 

He produced, as he spoke, what seemed a 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 283 

jewel-box. It was carved richly out of ebony by 
his own hand, and inlaid with a fanciful tracery 
of pearl, representing a boy in pursuit of a but- 
terfly, which, elsewhere, had become a winged 
spirit, and was flying heavenward ; while the boy, 
or youth, had found such eflicacy in his strong 
desire that he ascended from earth to cloud, and 
from cloud to celestial atmosphere, to win the 
beautiful. This case of ebony the artist opened, 
and bade Annie place her finger on its edge. 
She did so, but almost screamed as a butterfly 
fluttered forth, and, alighting on her finger's tip, 
sat waving the ample magnificence of its purple 
and gold-speckled wings, as if in prelude to a 
flight. It is impossible to express by words the 
glory, the splendor, the delicate gorgeousness 
which were softened into the beauty of this object. 
Nature's ideal, butterfly was here realized in all 
its perfection ; not in the pattern of such faded 
insects as flit among earthly flowers, but of those 
which hover across the meads of paradise for 
child-angels and the spirits of departed infants 
to disport themselves with. The rich down was 
visible upon its wings ; the lustre of its eyes 
seemed instinct with spirit. The firelight glim- 
mered around this wonder, — the candles gleamed 
upon it; but it glistened apparently by its own 
radiance, and illuminated the finger and out- 
stretched hand on which it rested with a white 
gleam like that of precious stones. In its perfect 
beauty, the consideration of size was entirely 
lost. Had its wings overreached the firmament, 
the mind could not have been more filled or sat- 
isfied. 



284 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

" Beautiful ! beautiful ! '' exclaimed Annie. 
** Is it alive ? Is it alive ? " 

" Alive t To be sure it is," answered her hus- 
band " Do you suppose any mortal has skill 
enough to make a butterfly, or would put him- 
self to the trouble of making one, when any child 
may catch a score of them in a summer^ s after- 
noon ? Alive ? Certainly ! But this pretty box 
is undoubtedly of our friend Owen's manufact- 
ure ; and really it does him credit.'^ 

At this moment the butterfly waved its wings 
anew, with a motion so absolutely life-like that 
Annie was startled, and even awe-stricken ; for, 
in spite of her husband's opinion, she could not 
satisfy herself whether it was indeed a living 
creature or a piece of wondrous mechanism. 

"Is it alive?" she repeated, more earnestly 
than before. 

" Judge for yourself," said Owen Warland, 
who stood gazing in her face with fixed atten- 
tion. 

The butterfly now flung itself upon the air, 
fluttered round Annie's head, and soared into a 
distant region of the parlor, still making itself 
perceptible to sight by the starry gleam in which 
the motion of its wings enveloped it. The infant 
on the floor followed its course with his sagacious 
little eyes. After flying about the room, it re- 
turned in a spiral curve and settled again on 
Annie's finger. 

" But is it alive 1 " exclaimed she again ; and 
the finger on which the gorgeous mystery had 
alighted was so tremulous that the butterfly was 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 285 

forced to balance himself with his wings. "Tell 
me if it be alive, or whether you created it." 

" Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beau- 
tiful ? " rephed Owen Warland. " Alive ? Yes, 
Annie ; it may well be said to possess life, for it 
has absorbed my own being into itself ; and in the 
secret of that butterfly, and in its beauty, — which 
is not merely outward, but deep as its whole sys- 
tem, — is represented the intellect, the imagina- 
tion, the sensibility, the soul of an Artist of the 
Beautiful ! Yes ; I created it. But — and here 
his countenance somewhat changed — " this butter- 
fly is not now to me what it was when I beheld it 
afar off in the day-dreams of my youth." 

" Be it what it may, it is a pretty plaything,'^ 
said the blacksmith, grinning with childlike 
delight. *' I wonder whether it would condescend 
to alight on such a great clumsy finger as mine 1 
Hold it hither, Annie." 

By the artist's direction, Annie touched her 
finger's tip to that of her husband ; and, after a 
momentary delay, the butterfly fluttered from one 
to the other. It preluded a second flight by a 
similar, yet not precisely the same, waving of 
wings as in the first experiment ; then ascending 
from the blacksmith's stalwart finger, it rose in a 
gradually enlarging curve to the ceiling, made 
one wide sweep around the room, and returned 
with an undulating movement to the point 
whence it had started. 

" Well, that does beat all nature ! " cried 
Robert Danforth, bestowing the heartiest praise 
that he could find expression for ; and, indeed, 



2S6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

had he paused there, a man of finer words and 
nicer perception could not easily have said more. 
*' That goes beyond me, I confess. But what 
then ? There is more real use in one downright 
blow of my sledge hammer than in the whole five 
years' labor that our friend Owen has wasted on 
this butterfly.'' 

Here the child clapped his hands and made a 
great babble of indistinct utterance, apparently 
demanding that the butterfly should be given him 
for a plaything. 

Owen Warland, meanwhile, glanced sidelong at 
Annie, to discover whether she sympathized in 
her husband's estimate of the comparative value 
of the beautiful and the practical. There was, 
amid all her kindness towards himself, amid all 
the wonder and admiration with which she con- 
templated the marvellous work of his hands 
and incarnation of his idea, a secret scorn, — too 
secret, perhaps, for her own consciousness, and 
perceptible only to such intuitive discernment as 
that of the artist. But Owen, in the latter stages 
of his pursuit, had risen out of the region in 
which such a discovery might have been torture. 
He knew that the world, and Annie as the repre- 
sentative of the world, whatever praise might , be 
bestowed, could never say the fitting word nor 
feel the fitting sentiment which should be the 
perfect recompense of an artist who, symbolizing 
a lofty moral by a material trifle, — converting what 
was earthly to spiritual gold, — had won the beau- 
tiful into his handiwork. Not at this latest mo- 
ment was he to learn that the reward of all high 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 287 

performance must be sought within itself, or 
sought in vain. There was, however, a view of 
the matter which Annie and her husband, and 
even Peter Hovenden, might fully have under- 
stood, and which would have satisfied them that 
the toil of years had here been worthily bestowed. 
Owen Warland might have told them that this, 
butterfly, this plaything, this bridal gift of a poor 
watchmaker to a blacksmith's wife,»was, in truth, 
a gem of art that a monarch would have pur- 
chased with honors and abundant wealth, and 
have treasured it among the jewels of his kingdom 
as the most unique and wondrous of them all. But 
the artist smiled and kept the secret to himself. 

" Father," said Annie, thinking that a word of 
praise from the old watchmaker might gratify 
his former apprentice, " do come and admire this 
pretty butterfly.'^ 

" Let us see," said Peter Hovenden, rising 
from his chair, with a sneer upoii his face that 
always made people doubt, as he himself did, in 
everything but a material existence. " Here 
is my finger for it to alight upon. I shall 
understand it better when once I have touched 
it." 

But, to the increased astonishment of Annie, 
when the tip of her father's finger was pressed 
against that of her husband, on which the butterfly 
still rested, the insect drooped its wings and 
seemed on the point of falling to the floor. 
Even the bright spots of gold upon its wings and 
body, unless her eyes deceived her, grew dim, 
and the glowing purple took a dusky hue, and 



288 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

the starry lustre that gleamed around the black- 
smith's hand became faint and vanished. 

" It is dying ! it is dying ! *' cried Annie, in 
alarm. 

*' It has been delicately wrought," said the 
artist, calmly. " As I told you, it has imbibed a 
spiritual essence, — call it magnetism, or what you 
will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery 
its exquisite siJsceptibility suffers torture, as does 
the soul of him who instilled his own life into it. 
It has already lost its beauty ; in a few moments 
more its mechanism would be irreparably in- 
jured." 

" Take away your hand, father ! " entreated 
Annie, turning pale. " Here is my child ; let it 
rest on his innocent hand. There, perhaps, its 
life will revive and its colors grow brighter than 
ever." 

Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his 
finger. The butterfly then appeared to recover 
the power of voluntary motion, while its hues as- 
sumed much of their original lustre and the 
gleam of starlight, which was its most ethereal 
attribute, again formed a halo round about it. 
At first, when transferred from Robert Danforth's 
hand to the small finger of the child this radi- 
ance grew so powerful that it positively threw 
the little fellow's shadow back against the wall. 
He, meanwhile, extended his plump hand as he 
had seen his father and mother do, and watched 
the waving of the insect's wings with infantine 
delight. Nevertheless, there was a certain odd 
expression of sagacity that made Owen Warland 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 289 

feel as if here were old Peter Hovenden, partially, 
and but partially, redeemed from his hard scep- 
ticism into childish faith. 

" How wise the little monkey looks ! '* whis* 
pered Robert Danforth to his wife. 

** I never saw such a look on a child's face,'^ 
answered Annie, admiring her own infant, and 
with good reason far more than the artistic 
butterfly. " The darling knows more of the mys- 
tery than we do.'' 

As if the butterfly, like the artist, were con- 
scious of something not entirely congenial in the 
child's nature, it alternately sparkled and grew 
dim. At length it arose from the small hand of 
the infant with an airy motion that seemed ta 
bear it upward without an effort, as if the ethereal 
instincts with which its master's spirit had en- 
dowed it impelled this fair vision involuntarily 
to a higher sphere. Had there been no obstruc- 
tion, it might have soared into the sky and grown 
immortal. But its lustre gleamed upon the ceil- 
ing ; the exquisite texture of its wings brushed 
against that earthly medium ; and a sparkle or 
two, as of star-dust, floated downward and lay 
glimmering on the carpet. Then the butterfly 
came fluttering down, and, instead of returning 
to the infant, was apparently attracted towards 
the artist's hand. 

"Not so ! not so ! " murmured Owen Warland, 
as if his handiwork could have understood him. 
"Thou hast gone forth out of thy master's heart. 
There is no return for thee." 

With a wavering movement, and emitting a 
19 



290 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

tremulous radiance, the butterfly struggled, as it 
were, towards the infant, and was about to alight 
upon his finger ; but, while it still hovered in the 
air, the little child of strength, with his grand- 
sire's sharp and shrewd expression in his face, 
made a snatch at the marvellous insect and com- 
pressed it in his hand. Annie screamed. Old 
Peter Hovenden burst into a cold and scornful 
laugh. The blacksmith, by main force, unclosed 
the infant's hand, and found within the palm a 
small heap of glittering fragments^ whence the 
mystery of beauty had fled forever. And as for 
Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what 
seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and which 
was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other 
butterfly than this. When the artist rose high 
enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by 
which he made it perceptible to mortal senses 
became of little value in his eyes while his spirit 
possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 291 



A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION. 

The other day, having a leisure hour at my 
disposal, I stepped into a new museum, to which 
my notice was casually drawn by a small and un- 
obtrusive sign : '* To be seen here, a Vir- 
tuoso's Collection." Such was the simple yet 
not altogether unpromising announcement that 
turned my steps aside for a little while from the 
sunny sidewalk of our principal thoroughfare. 
Mounting a sombre staircase, I pushed open a 
door at its summit, and found myself in the pres- 
ence of a person, who mentioned the moderate 
sum that would entitle me to admittance. 

" Three shillings, Massachusetts tenor," said he. 
" No, I mean half a dollar, as you reckon in these 
days." 

While searching my pocket for the coin I 
glanced at the doorkeeper, the marked character 
and individuality of whose aspect encouraged me 
to expect something not quite in the ordinary 
way. He wore an old-fashioned great-coat, much 
faded, within which his meagre person was so 
completely enveloped that the rest of his attire 
was undistinguishable. But his visage was re- 
markably wind-flushed, sunburnt, and weather- 
worn, and had a most unquiet, nervous, and 
apprehensive expression. It seemed as if this 



292 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

man had. some all-important object in view, some 
point of deepest interest to be decided, some 
momentous question to ask, might he but hope 
for a reply. As it was evident, however, that I 
could have nothing to do with his private affairs, 
I passed through an open doorway, which ad- 
mitted me into the extensive hall of the museum. 

Directly in front of the portal was the bronze 
statue of a youth with winged feet. He was rep- 
resented in the act of flitting away from earth, 
yet wore such a look of earnest invitation that it 
impressed me like a summons to enter the hall. 

'' It is the original statue of Opportunity, by 
the ancient sculptor Lysippus,'' said a gentleman 
w^ho now approached me. " I place it at the en- 
trance of my museum, because it is not at all 
times that one can gain admittance to such a 
collection." 

The speaker was a middle-aged person, of 
whom it was not easy to determine whether he 
had spent his life as a scholar or as a man of 
action ; in truth, all outward and obvious peculi- 
arities had been worn away by an extensive and 
promiscuous intercourse with the world. There 
was no mark about him of profession, individual 
habits, or scarcely of country ; although his dark 
complexion and high features made me conjecture 
that he was a native of some southern clime of 
Europe. At all events, he was evidently the 
virtuoso in person. 

" With your permission," said he, " as we have 
no descriptive catalogue, I will accompany you 
through the museum and point out whatever may 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



293 



be most worthy of attention. In the first place, 
here is a choice collection of stuffed animals." 

Nearest the door stood the outward semblance 
of a wolf, exquisitely prepared, it is true, and 
showing a very wolfish fierceness in the large 
glass eyes which were inserted into its wild and 
crafty head. Still it was merely the skin of a 
wolf, with nothing to distinguish it from other 
individuals of that unlovely breed. 

" How does this animal deserve a place in your 
collection 1 '' inquired I. 

" It is the wolf that devoured Little Red Riding- 
Hood,'' answ^ered the virtuoso ; " and by his 
side — with a milder and more matronly look, as 
you perceive — stands the she-wolf that suckled 
Romulus and Remus." 

" Ah, indeed ! " exclaimed I. " And what 
lovely lamb is this with the snow-white fleece, 
which seems to be of as delicate a texture as in- 
nocence itself .^ " 

" Methinks you have but carelessly read 
Spenser," replied my guide, "or you would at 
once recognize the * milk-white lamb ' which Una 
led. But I set no great value upon the lamb. 
The next specimen is better worth our notice." 

" What ! " cried I, " this strange animal, with 
the black head of an ox upon the body of a white 
horse } Were it possible to suppose it, I should 
say that this was Alexander's steed Buceph- 
alus." 

" The same," said the virtuoso. " And can 
you likewise give a name to the famous charger 
that stands beside him ? " 



294 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



Next to the renowned Bucephalus stood ths 
mere skeleton of a horse, with the white bones 
peeping through his ill-conditioned hide ; but, if 
my heart had not warmed towards that pitiful 
anatomy, I might as well have quitted the museum 
at once. Its rarities had not been collected with 
pain and toil from the four quarters of the earth, 
and from the depths of the sea, and from the pal- 
aces and sepulchres of ages, for those who could 
mistake this illustrious steed. 

" It is Rosinante ! '* exclaimed I, with enthu- 
siasm. 

And so it proved. My admiration for the 
noble and gallant horse caused me to glance 
with less interest at the other animals, although 
many of them might have deserved the notice of 
Cuvier himself. There was the donkey which 
Peter Bell cudgelled so soundly, and a brother 
of the same species who had suffered a similar 
infliction from the ancient prophet Balaam. 
Some doubts were entertained, however, as to the 
authenticity of the latter beast. My guide pointed 
out the venerable Argus, that faithful dog of 
Ulysses, and also another dog (for so the skin 
bespoke it), which, though imperfectly preserved, 
seemed once to have had three heads. It was 
Cerberus. I was considerably amused at detect- 
ing in l.n obscure corner the fox that became so 
famous by the loss of his tail. There were 
several stuffed cats, which, as a dear lover of that 
comfortable beast, attracted my affectionate 
regards. One was Dr. Johnson'i cat Hodge ; 
and in the same row stood the favorite cats of 



MOSSES FROM AN- OLD MANSE. 295 

Mahomet, Gray, and Walter Scott, together with 
Puss in Boots, and a cat of very noble aspect 
who had once been a deity of ancient Egypt. 
Byron's tame bear came next. I must not for- 
get to mention the Erymanthean boar, the skin 
of St. George's dragon, and that of the serpent 
Python ; and another skin with beautifully varie- 
gated hues, supposed to have been the garment 
of the " spirited sly snake," which tempted Eve. 
Against the walls were suspended the horns of 
the stag that Shakespeare shot ; and on the floor 
lay the ponderous shell of the tortoise which fell 
upon the head of yEschylus. In one row, as 
natural as life, stood the sacred bull Apis, the 
** cow with the crumpled horn," and a very wild- 
looking young heifer, which I guessed to be the 
cow that jumped over the moon. She was prob- 
ably killed by the rapidity of her descent. As I 
turned a^yay, my eyes fell upon an indescribable 
monster, which proved to be a griffin. 

" I look in vain," observed I, "• for the skin of 
an animal which might well deserve the closest 
study of a naturalist, — the winged horse, 
Pegasus." 

" He is not yet dead," replied the virtuoso ; 
*' but he is so hard ridden by many young gentle- 
men of the day that I hope soon to add his skin 
and skeleton to -my collection." 

We now passed to the next alcove of the hall^ 
in which was a multitude of stuffed birds. They 
were very prettily arranged, some upon the 
branches of trees, others brooding upon nests^ 
and others suspended by wires so artificially that 



296 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

they seemed in the very act of flight. Among 
them was a white dove, with a withered branch 
of oHve-leaves in her mouth. 

*' Can this be the very dove/' inquired I, " that 
brought the message of peace and hope to the 
tempest-beaten passengers of the ark ? " 

^' Even so," said my companion. 

'* And this raven, I suppose," continued I, "is 
the same that fed Elijah in the wilderness." 

" The raven ? No," said the virtuoso ; " it is 
a bird of modern date. He belonged to one 
Barnaby Rudge, and many people fancied that 
the Devil himself was disguised under his sable 
plumage. But poor Grip has drawn his last cork, 
and has been forced to ' say die ' at last. This 
other raven, hardly less curious, is that in which 
the soul of King George I. revisited his lady- 
love, the Duchess of Kendal." 

My guide next pointed out Minerva's owl and 
the vulture that preyed upon the liver of Prome- 
theus. There was likewise the sacred ibis of 
Egypt, and one of the Stymphalides which Her- 
cules shot in his sixth labor. Shelley's skylark, 
Bryant's water-fowl, and a pigeon from the belfry 
of the Old South Church, preserved by N. P. 
Willis, were placed on the same perch. I could 
not but shudder on beholding Coleridge's alba- 
tross^ transfixed with the Ancient Mariner's cross- 
bow shaft. Beside this bird of awful poesy stood 
a gray goose of very ordinary aspect. 

" Stuffed goose is no such rarity," observed I. 
" Why do you preserve such a specimen in your 
museum ? " 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 297 

" It is one of the flock whose cackling saved 
the Roman Capitol," answered the virtuoso. 
'* Many geese have cackled and hissed both be- 
fore and since ; but none, like those, have 
clamored themselves into immortality/' 

There seemed to be little else that demanded 
notice in this department of the museum, unless 
we except Robinson Crusoe's parrot, a live 
phoenix, a footless bird of paradise, and a splen- 
did peacock, supposed to be the same that once 
contained the soul of Pythagoras. I therefore 
passed to the next alcove, the shelves of which 
were covered with a miscellaneous collection of 
curiosities such as are usually found in similar 
establishments. One of the first things that 
took my eye was a strange-looking cap, woven of 
some substance that appeared to be neither 
woollen, cotton, nor linen. 

" Is this a magician's cap ? '' I asked. 

*' No," replied the virtuoso ; " it is merely Dr. 
Franklin's cap of asbestos. But here is one' 
which, perhaps, may suit you better. It is the 
wishing-cap of Fortunatus. Will you try it on } " 

" By no means," answered I, putting it aside . 
with my hand. " The day of wild wishes is past 
with me. I desire nothing that may not come in 
the ordinary course of Providence." 

"Then probably," returned the virtuoso, "you 
will not be tempted to rub this lamp ? " 

While speaking, he took from the shelf an 
antique brass lamp, curiously wrought with 
embossed figures, but so covered with verdigris 
that the sculpture was almost eaten away. 



298 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

** It is a thousand years," said he, " since the 
genius of this lamp constructed Aladdin's palace 
in a single night. But he still retains his power ; 
and the man who rubs Aladdin's lamp has but 
to desire either a palace or a cottage." 

" I might desire a cottage," replied I ; " but I 
would have it founded on sure and stable truth, 
not on dreams and fantasies. I have learned to 
look for the real and the true." 

My guide next showed me Prospero's magic 
wand, broken into three fragments by the hand 
of its mighty master. On the same shelf lay the 
gold ring of ancient Gyges, which enabled the 
wearer to walk invisible. On the other side of 
the alcove was a tall looking-glass in a frame of 
ebony, but veiled with a curtain of purple silk, 
through the rents of which the gleam of the mir- 
ror was perceptible. 

" This is Cornelius Agrippa's magic glass," 
observed the virtuoso. *' Draw aside the curtain, 
and picture any human form within your mind, 
and it will be reflected in the mirror." 

" It is enough if I can picture it within my 
mind," answered I. ^' Why should I wish it to be 
repeated in the mirror ? But, indeed, these 
works of magic have grown wearisome to me. 
There are so many greater wonders in the world, 
to those who keep their eyes open and their 
sight undimmed by custom, that all the delusions 
of the old sorcerers seem flat and stale. Unless 
you can show me something really curious, I care 
not to look further into your museum." 

*^ Ah, well, then," said the virtuoso, composedly. 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 299 

" perhaps you may deem some of my antiquarian 
rarities deserving of a glance/' 

He pointed out the iron mask, now corroded 
with rust ; and my heart grew sick at the sight of 
this dreadful relic, which had shut out a human 
being from sympathy with his race. There was 
nothing half so terrible in the axe that beheaded 
King Charles, nor in the dagger that slew Henry 
of Navarre, nor in the arrow that pierced the 
heart of William Rufus, — all of which were shown 
to me. Many of the articles derived their in- 
terest, such as it was, from having been formerly 
in the possession of royalty. For instance, here 
was Charlemagne's sheepskin cloak, the flowing 
wig of Louis Quatorze, the spinning-wheel of 
Sardanapalus, and King Stephen's famous 
breeches which cost him but a crown. The 
heart of the Bloody Mary, with the w^ord 
^' Calais " worn into its diseased substance, was 
preserved in a bottle of spirits ; and near it lay 
the golden case in which the queen of Gustavus 
Adolphus treasured up that hero's heart. Among 
these relics and heirlooms of kings I must not 
forget the long, hairy ears of Midas, and a piece 
of bread which had been changed to gold by the 
touch of that unlucky monarch. And as Grecian 
Helen was a queen, it may here be mentioned 
that I was permitted to take into my hand a lock 
of her golden hair and the bowl which a sculptor 
modelled from the curve of her perfect breast. 
Here, likewise, was the robe that smotherd 
Agamemnon, Nero's fiddle, the Czar Peter's 
brandy-bottle, the crown of Semiramis, and 



300 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 



Canute's sceptre which he extended over the sea. 
That my own land may not deem itself neglected, 
let me add that I was favored with a sight of the 
skull of King Philip, the famous Indian chief, 
whose head the Puritans smote off and exhibited 
upon a pole. 

"' Show me something else," said I to the vir- 
tuoso. " Kings are in such an artificial position 
that people in the ordinary walks of life cannot 
feel an interest in their relics. If you could 
show me the straw hat of sweet little Nell, I 
would far rather see it than a king's golden 
crown." 

'* There it is," said my guide, pointing care- 
lessly with his staff to the straw hat in question. 
" But, indeed, you are hard to please. Here are 
the seven-league boots. Will you try them on ? '^ 

'' Our modern railroads have superseded their 
use," answered I ; " and as to these cowhide 
boots, I could show you quite as curious a pair at 
the Transcendental community in Roxbury." 

We next examined a collection of swords and 
other weapons, belonging to different epochs, but 
thrown together without much attempt at arrange- 
ment. Here was Arthur's sword Excalibar, and 
that of the Cid Campeador, and the sword of 
Brutus rusted with Caesar's blood and his own, and 
the sword of Joan of Arc, and that of Horatius, and 
that with which Virginius slew his daughter, and the 
one which Dionysius suspended over the head of 
Damocles. Here also was Arria's sword, which 
she plunged into her own breast, in order to taste 
of death before her husband. The crooked blade 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 301 

of Saladin's cimeter next attracted my notice. I 
know not by what chance, but so it happened, 
that the sword of one of our own militia generals 
was suspended between Don Quixote's lance and 
the brown blade of Hudibras. My heart throbbed 
high at the sight of the helmet of Miltiades 
and the spear that was broken in the breast 
of Epaminondas. I recognized the shield of 
Achilles by its resemblance to the admirable cast 
in the possession of Professor Felton. Nothing 
in this apartment interested me more than 
Major Pitcairn's pistol, the discharge of which, 
at Lexington, began the war of the Revolution, 
and was reverberated in thunder around the 
land for seven long years. The bow of Ulysses, 
though unstrung for ages, was placed against the 
wall, together with a sheaf of Robin Hood's 
arrows and the rifle of Daniel Boone. 

'' Enough of weapons," said I, at length ; 
*' although -I would gladly have seen the sacred 
shield which fell from heaven in the time of 
Numa. And surely you should obtain the sword 
which Washington unsheathed at Cambridge. 
But the collection does you much credit. Let us 
pass on." 

In the next alcove we saw the golden thigh of 
Pythagoras, which had so divine a meaning ; and, 
by one of the queer analogies to which the 
virtuoso seemed to be addicted, this ancient 
emblem lay on the same shelf with Peter Stuy- 
vesant's wooden leg, that was fabled to be of 
silver. Here was a remnant of the Golden 
Fleece, and a sprig of yellow leaves that resem- 



302 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

bled the foliage of a frost-bitten elm, but was 
duly authenticated as a portion of the golden 
branch by which ^neas gained admittance to 
the realm of Pluto. Atalanta's golden apple and 
one of the apples of discord were wrapped in the 
napkin of gold which Rampsinitus brought from 
Hades ; and the whole were deposited in the 
golden vase of Bias, with its inscription : " To 

THE WISEST." 

" And how did you obtain this vase ? " said I 
to the virtuoso. 

*' It was given me long ago," replied he, with 
a scornful expression in his eye, *' because I had 
learned to despise all things." 

It had not escaped me that, though the vir- 
tuoso was evidently a man of high cultivation, 
yet he seemed to lack sympathy with the spirit- 
ual, the sublime, and the tender. Apart from 
the whim that had led him to devote so much 
time, pains, and expense to the collection of this 
museum, he impressed me as one of the hardest 
and coldest men of the Vv^orld whom I had ever 
met. 

"• To despise all things ! " repeated I. "• This, 
at best, is the wisdom of the understanding. It 
is the creed of a man whose soul, whose better 
and diviner part, has never been awakened, or 
has died out of him." 

" I did not think that you were still so young," 
said the virtuoso. " Should you live to my 
years, you will acknowledge that the vase of 
Bias was not ill bestowed." 

Without further discussion of the point, he 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 303 

directed my attention to other curiosities. I ex- 
amined Cinderella's little glass slipper, and com- 
pared it with one of Diana's sandals, and with 
Fanny Elssler's shoe, which bore testimony to 
the muscular character of her illustrious foot. 
On the same shelf were Thomas the Rhymer's 
green velvet shoes, and the brazen shoe of Empe- 
docles which was thrown out of Mount ^tna. 
Anacreon's drinking-cup was placed in apt juxta- 
position with one of Tom Moore's wineglasses 
and Circe's magic bowl. These were symbols of 
luxury and riot; but near them stood the cup 
whence Socrates drank his hemlock, and that 
which Sir Philip Sidney put from his death- 
parched lips to bestow the draught upon a dying 
soldier. Next appeared a cluster of tobacco- 
pipes, consisting of Sir Walter Raleigh's, the ear- 
liest on record. Dr. Parr's, Charles Lamb's, and 
the first calumet of peace which was ever smoked 
between a . European and an Indian. Among 
other musical instruments, I noticed the lyre of 
Orpheus and those of Homer and Sappho, Dr. 
Franklin's famous whistle, the trumpet of 
Anthony Van Corlear, and the flute which Gold- 
smith played upon in his rambles through the 
French provinces. The staff of Peter the Her- 
mit stood in a corner with that of good old 
Bishop Jewel, and one of ivory, which had be- 
longed to Papirius, the Roman senator. The 
ponderous club of Hercules was close at hand* 
The virtuoso showed me the chisel of Phidias, 
Claude's palette, and the brush of Apelles, ob- 
serving that he intended to bestow the former 



3^4 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 



either on Greenough, Crawford, or Powers, and 
the two latter upon Washington Allston. Thera 
was a small vase of oracular gas from Delphos, 
which I trust will be submitted to the scientific 
analysis of Professor Silliman. I w^as deeply 
moved on beholding a vial of the tears into which 
Niobe was dissolved ; nor less so on learning 
that a shapeless fragment of salt was a relic of 
that victim of despondency and sinful regrets, — 
Lot's wife. My companion appeared to set great 
value upon some Egyptian darkness in a black- 
ing-jug. Several of the shelves were covered by 
a collection of coins, among which, however, I 
remember none but the Splendid Shilling, cele- 
brated by Philhps, and a dollar's worth of the 
iron money of Lycurgus, weighing about fifty 
pounds. 

Walking carelessly onward, I had nearly fallen 
over a huge bundle, like a pedler's pack, done up 
in sackcloth, and very securely strapped and 
corded. 

" It is Christian's burden of sin," said the 
virtuoso. 

*' O, pray let us open it ! " cried I. " For many 
a year I have longed to know its contents." 

" Look into your own consciousness and mem- 
ory," replied the virtuoso. " You will there find 
a list of whatever it contains." 

As this was an undeniable truth, I threw a 
melancholy look at the burden and passed on. A 
collection of old garments, hanging on pegs, was 
worthy of some attention, especially the shirt of 
Nessus, Caesar's mantle, Joseph's coat of many 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 305 

colors, the Vicar of Bray's cassock, Goldsmith's 
peach-bloom suit, a pair of President Jefferson's 
scarlet breeches, John Randolph's red baize hunt- 
ing-shirt, the drab small-clothes of the Stout Gen- 
tleman, and the rags of the " man all tattered and 
torn." George Fox's hat impressed me with deep 
reverence as a relic of perhaps the truest apostle 
that has appeared on earth for these eighteen 
hundred years. My eye was next attracted by an 
old pair of shears, which I should have taken for 
a memorial of some famous tailor, only that the 
virtuoso pledged his veracity that they were the 
identical scissors of Atropos. He also showed 
me a broken hour-glass which had been thrown 
aside by Father Time, together with the old gen- 
tleman's gray forelock, tastefully braided into a 
brooch. In the hour-glass was the handful of 
sand, the grains of which had numbered the years 
of the Cumaean sibyl. I think it was in this alcove 
that I saw' the inkstand which Luther threw at 
the Devil, and the ring which Essex, while under 
sentence of death, sent to Queen Elizabeth. And 
here was the blood-incrusted pen of steel with 
which Faust signed away his salvation. 

The virtuoso now opened the door of a closet 
and showed me a lamp burning, while three others 
stood unlighted by its side. One of the three 
was the lamp of Diogenes, another that of Guy 
Fawkes, and the third that which Hero set forth 
to the midnight breeze in the high tower of 
Abydos. 

" See ! " said the virtuoso, blowing with all his 
force at the lighted lamp. 
20 



3o6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

The flame quivered and shrank away from his 
breath, but clung to the wick, and resumed its 
brilliancy as soon as the blast was exhausted. 

" It is an undying lamp from the tomb of Charle- 
magne," observed my guide. " That flame was 
kindled a thousand years ago.'* 

" How ridiculous to kindle an unnatural light 
in tombs ! " exclaimed I. " We should seek to 
behold the dead in the light of heaven. But 
what is the meaning of this chafing-dish of glow- 
ing coals } '* 

" That,'' answered the virtuoso, *^ is the original 
fire which Prometheus stole from heaven. Look 
steadfastly into it, and you will discern another 
curiosity." 

I gazed into that fire, — which, symbolically, 
was the origin of all that was bright and glorious 
in the soul of man, — and in the midst of it, behold 
a little reptile, sporting with evident enjoyment of 
the fervid heat! It was a salamander. 

" What a sacrilege ! " cried I, with inexpressible 
disgust. " Can you find no better use for this 
ethereal fire than to cherish a loathsome reptile 
in it ? Yet there are men who abuse the sacred 
fire of their own souls to as foul and guilty a 
purpose." 

The virtuoso made no answer except by a dry 
laugh and an assurance that the salamander was 
the very same which Benvenuto Cellini had seen 
in his father's household fire. He then proceeded 
to show me other rarities ; for this closet appeared 
to be the receptacle of what he considered most 
valuable in his collection. 



MOSSES FROM AA^ OLD MANSE, 307 

"There," said he, "is the Great Carbuncle o£ 
the White Mountains." 

I gazed with no Httle interest at this mighty 
gem, which it had been one of the wild projects 
of my youth to discover. Possibly it might have 
looked brighter to me in those days than now ; 
at all events, it had not such brilliancy as to detain 
me long from the other articles of the museum. 
The virtuoso pointed out to me a crystalline stone 
which hung by a gold chain against the wall. 

" That is the philosopher's stone," said he. 

" And have you the elixir vitas which generally 
accompanies it? '' inquired I. 

" Even so ; this urn is filled with it/' he replied, 
" A draught would refresh you. Here is Hebe's 
cup ; will you quaff a health from it 1 " 

My heart thrilled within me at the idea of such 
a reviving draught ; for methought I had great 
need of it after travelling so far on the dusty road 
of life. Bu't I know not whether it were a peculiar 
glance in the virtuoso's eye, or the circumstance 
that this most precious liquid was contained in 
an antique sepulchral urn, that made me pause. 
Then came many a thought with which, in the 
calmer and better hours of life, I had strength- 
ened myself to feel that Death is the very friend 
whom, in his due season, even the happiest mortal 
should be willing to embrace. 

" No ; I desire not an earthly immortality," said 
I. " Were man to live longer on the earth, the 
spiritual would die out of him. The spark of 
ethereal fire would be choked by the material, 
the sensual. There is a celestial something within 



3o8 MOSSES FROM AN" OLD MANSE. 

US that requires, after a certain time, the atmos- 
phere of heaven to preserve it from decay and ruin. 
I will have none of this liquid. You do well to 
keep it in a sepulchral urn ; for it would produce 
death while bestowing the shadow of life.^' 

"All this is unintelligible to me," responded 
my guide, with indifference. " Life — earthly life 
— is the only good. But you refuse the draught ? 
Well, it is not likely to be offered twice within 
one man's experience. Probably you have griefs 
which you seek to forget in death. I can enable 
you to forget them in life. Will you take a 
draught of Lethe ? " 

As he spoke, the virtuoso took from the shelf 
a crystal vase containing a sable liquor, which 
caught no reflected image from the objects 
around. 

" Not for the world ! " exclaimed I, shrinking 
back. " I can spare none of my recollections, 
not even those of error or sorrow. They are all 
alike the food of my spirit. As well never to have 
lived as to lose them now.'' 

Without further parley we passed to the next 
alcove, the shelves of which were burdened with 
ancient volumes and with those rolls of papyrus 
in which was treasured up the eldest wisdom of 
the earth. Perhaps the most valuable work in 
the collection, to a bibliomaniac was the book of 
Hermes. For my part, however, I would have 
given a higher price for those six of the Sibyl's 
books which Tarquin refused to purchase, and 
which the virtuoso informed me he had himself 
found in the cave of Trophonius. Doubtless 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 309 

these old volumes contain prophecies of the fate of 
Rome, both as respects the decline and fall of 
her temporal empire and the rise of her spiritual 
one. Not without value, likewise, was the work 
of Anaxagoras on Nature, hitherto supposed to be 
irrecoverably lost and the missing treatises of 
Longinus, by which modern criticism might profit, 
and those books of Livy for which the classic stu- 
dent has so long sorrowed without hope. Among 
these precious tomes I observed the original manu- 
script of the Koran, and also that of the Mormon 
Bible in Joe Smith's authentic autograph. Alexan- 
der's copy of the Iliad was also there, enclosed 
in the jewelled casket of Darius, still fragrant 
of the perfumes which the Persian kept in it. 

Opening an iron-clasped volume, bound in black 
leather, I discovered it to be Cornelius Agrippa's 
book of magic ; and it was rendered still more 
interesting .by the fact that many flowers, ancient 
and modern, were pressed between its leaves. 
Here was a rose from Eve's bridal bower, and all 
those red and white roses which were plucked in 
the garden of the Temple by the partisans of 
York and Lancaster. Here was Halleck's Wild 
Rose of Alloway. Cowper had contributed a 
Sensitive Plant, and Wordsworth an Eglantine, 
and Burns a Mountain Daisy, and Kirke White a 
Star of Bethlehem, and Longfellow a Sprig of 
Fennel, with its yellow flowers. James Russell 
Lowell had given a Pressed Flower, but fragrant 
still, which had been shadowed in the Rhine. 
There was also a sprig from Southey's Holly 
Tree. One of the most beautiful specimens was 



310 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 

a Fringed Gentian, which had been plucked and 
preserved for immortality by Bryant. From 
Jones Very, a poet whose voice is scarcely heard 
among us by reason of its depth, there was a 
Wind Flower and Columbine. 

As I closed Cornelius Agrippa's magic volume, 
an old, mildewed letter fell upon the floor. It 
proved to be an autograph from the Flying 
Dutchman to his wife. I could linger no longer 
among books ; for the afternoon was waning, 
and there was yet much to see. The bare men- 
tion of a few more curiosities must suffice. The 
immense skull of Polyphemus was recognizable 
by the cavernous hollow in the centre of the 
forehead where once had blazed the giant's single 
eye. The tub of Diogenes, Medea's caldron, and 
Psyche's vase of beauty were placed one within 
another. Pandora's box without the lid, stood 
next containing nothing but the girdle of Venus, 
which had been carelessly flung into it. A bundle 
of birch-rods which had been used by Shenstone's 
schoolmistress were tied up with the Countess of 
Salisbury's garter. I know not which to value 
most, a roc's egg as big as an ordinary hogshead, 
or the shell of the egg which Columbus s§t upon 
its end. Perhaps the most delicate article in the 
whole museum was Queen Mab's chariot, which, 
to guard it from the touch of meddlesome fingers, 
was placed under a glass tumbler. 

Several of the shelves were occupied by speci- 
mens of entomology. Feeling but little interest 
in the science, I noticed only Anacreon's grass- 
hoppers, and a bumblebee which had been 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, ' 311 

presented to the virtuoso by Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. 

In the part of the hall which we had now 
reached I observed a curtain, that descended 
from the ceiling to the floor in voluminous folds, 
of a depth, richness, and magnificence which I 
had never seen equalled. It was not to be 
doubted that this splendid though dark and 
solemn veil concealed a portion of the museum 
even richer in wonders than that through which I 
had already passed ; but, on my attempting to 
grasp the edge of the curtain and draw it aside, it 
proved to be an illusive picture. 

" You need not blush,'' remarked the virtuoso ; 
*^ for that same curtain deceived Zeuxis. It is the 
celebrated painting of Parrhasius." 

In a range with the curtain there were a number 
of other choice pictures by artists of ancient days. 
Here was the famous cluster of grapes by Zeuxis, 
so admirably depicted that it seemed as if the 
ripe juice were bursting forth. As to the pict- 
ure of the old woman by the same illustrious 
painter, and which was so ludicrous that he him- 
self died with laughing at it, I cannot say that it 
particularly moved my risibility. Ancient humor 
seems to have little power over modern muscles. 
Here, also, was the horse painted by Apelles 
which living horses neighed at ; his first portrait 
of Alexander the Great, and his last- unfinished 
picture of Venus asleep. Each of these works of 
art, together with others by Parrhasius, Timan- 
thes, Polygnotus, Apollodorus, Pausias, and Pam- 
philus, required more time and study than I could 



312 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

bestow for the adequate perception of their merits. 
I shall therefore leave them undescribed and un- 
criticised, nor attempt to settle the question of 
superiority between ancient and modern art. 

For the same reason I shall pass lightly over 
the specimens of antique sculpture which this in- 
defatigable and fortunate, virtuoso had dug out 
of the dust of fallen empires. Here was ^tion's 
cedar statue of ^sculapius, much decayed, and 
Alcon's iron statue of Hercules, lamentably 
rusted. Here was the statue of Victory, six feet 
high, which the Jupiter Olympus of Phidias had 
held in his hand. Here was a forefinger of the , 
Colossus of Rhodes, seven feet in length. Here 
was the Venus Urania of Phidias, and other im- 
ages of male and female beauty or grandeur, 
wrought by sculptors who appeared never to have 
debased their souls by the sight of any meaner 
forms than those of gods or godlike mortals. But 
the deep simplicity of these great works was not 
to be comprehended by a mind excited and dis- 
turbed, as mine was, by the various objects that 
had recently been presented to it. I therefore 
turned away with merely a passing glance, resolv- 
ing on some future occasion to brood over each 
individual statue and picture until my inmost 
spirit should feel their excellence. In this depart- 
ment, again, I noticed the tendency to whimsical 
combinations and ludicrous analogies which 
seemed to influence many of the arrangements of 
the museum. The wooden statue so well known 
as the Palladium of Troy was placed in close 
opposition with the wooden head of General 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 313 

Jackson, which was stolen a few years since from 
the bows of the frigate Constitution. 

We had now completed the circuit of the spa- 
cious hall, and found ourselves again near the 
door. Feeling somewhat wearied with the sur- 
vey of so many novelties and antiquities, I sat 
down upon Cowper's sofa, while the virtuoso 
threw himself carelessly into Rabelais's easy- 
chair. Casting my eyes upon the opposite wall, 
I was surprised to perceive the shadow of a man 
flickering unsteadily across the wainscot, and 
looking as if it were stirred by some breath of air 
, that found its way through the door or windows. 
No substantial figure was visible from which this 
shadow might be thrown ; nor, had there been 
such, was there any sunshine that would have 
caused it to darken upon the wall. 

" It is Peter Schlemihl's shadow," observed 
the virtuoso, " and one of the most valuable arti- 
cles in my collection." 

" Methinks a shadow would have made a fit- 
ting doorkeeper to such a museum," said I ; 
" although, indeed, yonder figure has something 
strange and fantastic about him, which suits well 
enough with many of the impressions which I 
have received here. Pray, who is he ? 

While speaking, I gazed more scrutinizingly 
than before at the antiquated presence of the 
person who had admitted me, and who still sat 
on his bench with the same restless aspect, and 
dim, confused, questioning anxiety that I had 
noticed on my first entrance. At this moment 
he looked eagerly towards us, and, half starting 
from his seat, addressed me. 



314 MOSSES FROM AJV OLD MANSE. 

" I beseech you, kind sir/' said he, in a 
cracked, melancholy tone, " have pity on the most 
unfortunate man in the world. For Heaven's 
sake, answer me a single question ? Is this the 
town of Boston ? " 

" You have recognized him now," said the vir- 
tuoso. " It is Peter Rugg, the missing man. I 
chanced to meet him the other day still in search 
of Boston, and conducted him hither ; and, as he 
could not succeed in finding his friends, I have 
taken him into my service as doorkeeper. He is 
somewhat too apt to ramble, but otherwise a man 
of trust and integrity." 

" And might I venture to ask," continued I, 
" to whom am I indebted for this afternoon's 
gratification ? " 

The virtuoso, before replying, laid his hand 
upon an antique dart, or javelin, the rusty steel 
head of which seemed to have been blunted, as 
if it had encountered the resistance of a tempered 
shield, or breastplate. 

*^ My name has not been without its distinc- 
tion in the world for a longer period than that of 
any other man alive," answered he. " Yet many 
doubt of my existence ; perhaps you will do so 
to-morrow. This dart which I hold in my hand 
was once grim Death's own weapon. It served 
him well for the space of four thousand years ; 
but it fell blunted, as you see, when he directed 
it against my breast." 

These words were spoken with the calm and 
cold courtesy of manner that had characterized 
this singular personage throughout our interview* 



MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE, 315 

1 fancied, it is true, that there was a bitterness 
indefinably mingled with his tone, as of one cut 
off from natural sympathies and blasted with a 
doom that had been inflicted on no other human 
being, and by the results of which he had ceased 
to be human. Yet, withal, it seemed one of the 
most terrible consequences of that doom that the 
victim no longer regarded it as a calamity, but 
had finally accepted it as the greatest good that 
could have befallen him. 

"You are the Wandering Jew ! '' exclaimed I. 

The virtuoso bowed without emotion of any 
kind ; for, by centuries of custom, he had almost 
lost the sense of strangeness in his fate, and was 
but imperfectly conscious of the astonishment 
and awe with which it affected such as are cap- 
able of death. 

" Your doom is indeed a fearful one ! '' said I, 
with irrepressible feeling and a frankness that 
afterwards startled me ; " yet perhaps the ethe- 
real spirit is not entirely extinct under all this 
corrupted or frozen mass of earthly life. Perhaps 
the immortal spark may yet be rekindled by a 
breath of heaven. Perhaps you may yet be per- 
mitted to die before it is too late to live eternally. 
You have my prayers for such a consummation. 
Farewell." 

" Your prayers will be in vain,'' replied he, with 
a smile of cold triumph. " My destiny is linked 
with the realities of earth. You are welcome to 
your visions and shadows of a future state ; but 
give me what I can see, and touch, and under- 
stand, and I ask no more." 



3l6 MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE. 

" It is indeed too late," thought I. " The soul 
is dead within him.'* 

Struggling between pity and horror, I extended 
my hand, to which the virtuoso gave his own^ 
still with the habitual courtesy of a man of the 
world, but without a single heart-throb of human 
brotherhood. The touch seemed like ice, yet I 
know not whether morally or physically. As I 
departed, he bade me observe that the inner door 
of the hall was constructed with the ivory leaves 
of the gateway through which ^neas and the 
Sibyl had been dismissed from Hades. 



THE END, 



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